The recent eco-expo in the weekend of June 7 and 8 brought around 600 visitors to Emilio Wilson Park.  Mrs Joan Berkely, our State Secretary of health and Sarah Wesscott leader of Government as well as Mr. Jan Beaujon managing director of Windward Island bank were picked up by VOBRID. The new veggy oil company with their Mercedes Benz Station which was driving on this veggie oil and brought them to Emilio Wilson park to open the ECO EXPO of enviroweek 2008.

This was not considered a bad result seeing the tight budget of the Organization for marketing. Especially the Saturday was a success with around 500 visitors. A lot of visitors were attracted by the biofuel Mercedes of Vobrid and their live demonstration how to build it in a truck. But also the French Lycee with the lawn mower and the Nissan Mureno on (partly) water drew a crowd. The glass crusher of Steve Mix was also popular while the agricultural stand of the St. Maarten Agricultural Enterprise was very happy with the registration of visitors who wanted to know more about back yard gardening.

Dourm Products were also popular with their natural products. Universal Solar and Solar Hart were also there to answer many questions of potential customers. Mangonet had some interesting energy saving products and Energy Dynamics from Trinidad were there with a direct fired absorption chiller that is a break through in the air conditioning field.

The Sundial School presented the solar cookers from the solar cooker contest.  The Learning Unlimited School took the prices with their original solar cookers. They also showed how to make food on a professional cooker of CFS which could be tasted as well.

Omni St. Maarten introduced the first air conditioning in St. Maarten that can save a lot of money because it only needs full power for the start up and when it reaches the needed temperature the unit only needs moderate energy to maintain the temperature.

Gebe made a good appearance with their stand where you could see the difference between the energy consumption between the different lights. The led was indeed the winner. Close to Gebe we could see demo's of the new company Enviro Choice with their green cleaning products. The Earth Collection showed their green clothing with an Eco label.

Planet Pure water supplied us with drinking water that was drawn from the humid air. A small miracle.  Exefor was there with drilling equipment for ground water and water treatment and Clean St. Maarten had nice stand about cleaning. Of course the Windward Island Bank as the main sponsor was present with their green loan department.

Ocean Care was very present with the scouts and had a lot of entertainment and presentations. Especially the one with the sharks was interesting. The Ital shack took care of the food with their original cooking with natural ingredients. The Dominica /St. Martin Association also showed some real fresh fruit that was very tasteful.

During the expo we had Steve Spence with several presentations about alternative energy and of course the last day of our event we had Kerry Mcdonald about the geothermal energy sources on volcanic islands like Nevis and Saba. It was an disappointment to hear that our Gebe did not respond at all to the request of the West Indies Power Company if Gebe is interested in a connection with Nevis. Budget marine also did a presentation about the basics of solar power during the day.

For the music we had the Police Band 911 and the Freedom Fighters and the Capoeira group entertained the visitors with their martial art, stilt walkers and this time also a very successful Tanny and the Boys act.

All in all we were very satisfied with the event and we are looking forward to do it  even better next year with more practical demonstrations.