ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The City of Albuquerque hosted the first-ever statewide Earth Day event Sunday morning at Balloon Fiesta Park.

The goal is to promote sustainability, and protect the environment. The push to become more environmentally-friendly has become more popular over the years.

“This event is bringing together a bunch of different organizations from around the state that are just proactively promoting sustainability, reliability, renewable sources to better impact our state, and the Earth moving forward,” said Talia Storch, with New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperatives.

Engineering students at UNM have been researching electric vehicles for years, and they say the event was a good opportunity to showcase their Capstone Project. 

“We all come together to build a race car for the Formula SAE Competition in Michigan, full electric. We just moved there a few years ago, so this is our fourth year doing it, we build a new one every year. From the ground up, we build a competitive car to compete against colleges around the world,” said Max Tafoy, a UNM engineering student. 

The theme of the event this year was the “Planet vs. Plastics.” With the overall goal of reducing plastic use by 60% by the year 2040.

While there was a big focus on what people can do now:

“If you think about all these booths that are here, everyone is going green in their life whether solar, electric vehicles. But of course if people live green then they may want to go greener when they die,” said Darren Crouch, president & CEO of Passages International. 

Crouch was at Sunday’s event’s educating people about how they can go green in the afterlife. 

“We provide funeral homes with greener options like wicker caskets for burial, biodegradable urns for cremated remains, cleaner burning containers for cremation that burn at lower temperatures and don’t emit toxic chemicals,” said Crouch. 

The Earth Day Festival also had a number of activities for children to start thinking about sustainability.