The annual Rubber Ducky Festival [1] at the Passaic River Park in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, is a family-oriented afternoon of music, activities, and food that is sponsored by the Berkeley Heights Rotary Club. While all of the activities are plenty of fun, the most beloved part of the day is the Rubber Ducky Race.

For the race, thousands of plastic yellow bathtub ducks are numbered and “adopted” for the sum of $5 each. All the ducks are paddled upstream from the park, and then they are dumped simultaneously into the Passaic River. The race is on! The ducks float downstream, where they are captured by in order of arrival by a “Duck-O-Matic” duck-catching device, which was invented several years ago by a local Boy Scouts troop. The first 50 ducks win a prize, explains Hal Daume, a member of the Rotary Club’s Rubber Ducky Committee. “Tail gunner Charlie, the very last duck, also gets a prize,” says Hal.

This ingenious event, a fundraiser for local organizations--including the high school band, boys and girls scout troops, and the Interact Club--was the brainchild of a boy scout six years ago. Hal says that the organizers are careful to protect the environment. All ducks are removed from the river immediately after the competition. “There is no duck pollution,” he says.

This year’s festival on June 13 featured something new: Project Porchlight was on hand to educate festival goers about the benefits of every-saving compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. A total of 260 CFL bulbs were distributed, part of Project Porchlight New Jersey’s campaign to distribute one million free energy-efficient light bulbs to residents across the state. Project Porchlight is an initiative of One Change [2], and the campaign is made possible thanks to funding by the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) [3] and New Jersey’s Clean Energy Program (NJCEP) [4].

“Having Project Porchlight there was delightful,” says Hal. “Project Porchlight is a marvelous concept, and its time has come. I can’t tell you how many people I saw later on who were saying, ‘Hey, I got one of those light bulbs.’”

When it comes to protecting our environment, simple actions matter. Even something as simple as changing a light bulb is important. “Conservation is critical. Small actions are critical. Simple actions, small actions multiplied, can make all the difference,” says Hal. “The world works that way. Everything on this planet works that way. One snowflake doesn’t do much and sort of evaporates pretty quickly. But take a million or more of them, you’ll notice.”