BagFest: IU South Bend is hosting BagFest on Saturday, April 14, 2007. There will be several festival activities, including:

Bag Drop-Off (all day; The Grill): Drop off will be collected by students. Drop off will be an on-going activity.

Panel discussion (1pm-2pm; The SAC): Guest speakers will lead a panel discussion on the consumption of plastic bags:
Steve Antonetti, District Manager of Wal-Mart, will address Wal-Mart's efforts to recycle plastic bags. 5 minute DVD presentation
Jeff Ashby, Co-Owner of Rocky Mountain Recycling, will discuss the economics of plastic-bag recycling.
Vincent Cobb, Founder of reusablebags.com, will discuss the importance of reusing plastic and cloth bags.
Calvin Manns, Supervisor of South Bend Waste Paper, will talk about current recycling efforts in our community.

Informal Discussion Groups (2pm-3pm; The Grille):Panelists host a table of informal discussion about a specific topic in their area of enterprise.

Featured Speaker (3pm-4pm; The SAC): Elizabeth Royte, the bestselling author of Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, will present the keynote address.

Exhibits (all day; Pavillion): If weather is permitting, booths will be set up for businesses to provide information and product demonstrations.

Music (all day; Pavillion): If weather is permitting, local bands will provide music.

Bag pile-up: Festival attendants will be encouraged to donate their plastic bags at the festival in order to make an enormous pile of plastic bags. Critically, there will be a running tally of the number of donated plastic bags gathered at the festival. The purpose of this activity is to provide festival attendants a visual representation of the number of plastic bags that are ultimately sent to landfills. Thus, participants will gain first-hand experience of how their personal donations reflect this community issue.

Bag Force: Fourth through twelfth graders are invited to join Bag Force, a student-lead task force promoting authentic civic action on the conservation of plastic bags. Bag Force members will brainstorm questions to ask the panel of experts who will be speaking at the festival, attend the panel discussion and present their questions to the experts, and will work together to develop a community action plan. The Bag Force Action Plan will detail the issue discovered from the panel discussion and from the background reading; it will also include suggestions for community improvements. This plan will be submitted to the Voice of the People in the South Bend Tribune.