Today we’d like to introduce you to Ana Garcia Doyle.
Ana, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My background and career are in digital publishing and marketing, which I love and still practice today. But my interest in the environment was sparked in 1999, when my husband Jim and I were living and working in Zurich, Switzerland — where our friends and neighbors lived lighter on the planet than we ever had in our home country. We learned to live with a much smaller fridge (no American super-sized anything in Europe, as far as we could tell), without superstores and bulk-buying; we took smaller, more frequent shopping trips and got to know our local purveyors at the florist, the wine shop, the cheese shop, the farmer’s market, the bakery. We biked, walked, and took public transit everywhere, were introduced to car-sharing, went for mountain hikes on the weekends.
Our oldest daughter was born while we were abroad, which made us think about how to make better decisions for the future — our future; her future; the future of our planet, and of her generation and generations to come. When we embarked on preparing homemade baby food, it seemed a fairly practical, utilitarian measure at the time. I now realize that educating ourselves better on healthy, sustainable, organic (plant-forward, pesticide-free) food systems would be (and is for many people) the “gateway drug” to environmental living. It was a small hop from organic eating to growing our own food to reducing our waste footprint.
Leap forward 17 years, and we are Chicago-area green homeowners in a LEED-registered, all-electric 100-year-old house run by geothermal heating and cooling, a 15kW solar array projected to generate 104% of our family of 5’s energy needs, and a Conservation At Home-certified landscape adjacent to a small greenhouse.
We are involved in local community sustainability efforts – including leadership in supporting our “zero waste” school district, where 9 of our neighborhood schools feature edible gardens, native butterfly gardens, solar panels, fruit orchards, large-scale composting, and more. Jim is on the board of the member-owned Sugar Beet Food Coop, and I am a founding member and Executive Director of the One Earth Film Festival.
We and our 3 children live as intentionally as we can, concerned with how to live full lives without filling our planet with the byproducts of consumerized living (plastic straws and takeout containers and carbon emissions, to name a few). It has been a great journey that continues to unfold!
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Striving for greener living is not always easy. When we returned home to America after 3 years abroad, it was hard to get used to the “live large” U.S. mentality again. We still struggle to balance the benefits of American culture with the smaller-footprint living that we’ve seen and adopted while living abroad.
Our green home project wasn’t without its challenges, either. When we looked at installing a residential greywater system in our home (to reuse tub and shower water for flushing toilets), we needed to petition the State of IL since the plumbing code didn’t allow it. We eventually received a plumbing code variance, and were able to install the system. We are now working to upgrade the greywater tank, since the tank malfunctioned after some years and company that manufactured it was purchased. We are hopeful that this will happen soon, but early adoption of anything has its guinea pig moments, for sure.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about One Earth Film Festival, a production of Green Community Connections – what should we know?
One Earth Film Festival is a production of non-profit organization Green Community Connections, which focuses on building community sustainability in Oak Park, River Forest, and the Greater West Side. The One Earth Film Festival, however, is a regional program. In its 7th year this past March, the Festival hosted 58 screenings and 2 special events in 47 venues throughout Chicagoland and beyond, touching 5 Chicago-area counties.
The Festival is known for its awareness-to-action model, where environmental films are screened in diverse communities at venues ranging from universities to public libraries to churches to museums to conservatories and more.
After the film, audience discussion is led by a trained facilitator, topic experts are engaged in a panel discussion, and local (and sometimes national or regional) advocacy groups share resources to encourage attendees toward environmental action. Our film festival colleagues around the country inform us that our model is unique, and our impact studies show that our model is effective.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I am blessed to work with an incredible 50-member planning team to put on the Festival. We are aided in our work by over 600 volunteers; more than 200 sponsors and partners; and a reliable, engaged, expert network of environmental and community organizations and groups who help host films, participate in programming, and much more. Having incredible partners allowed us to reach over 5,400 attendees this year, from Oak Park to Hyde Park, from Englewood to Evanston to Elmhurst, from Waukegan to Whiting (Indiana).
Contact Info:
- Address: One Earth Film Festival/Green Community Connections
166 N. Humphrey #1N
Oak Park, IL 60302 - Website: oneearthfilmfest.org
- Phone: 773-454-1447
- Email: ana@oneearthfilmfest.org
Image Credit:
Cassandra West, Gloria Araya, Todd Rosenberg Photography, Make It Better Magazine
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