The Department of Environmental Protection will display its new interactive “DEP at Home” exhibit during the Erie Home and Garden Expo at the Bayfront Convention Center through March 17.

DEP at Home is an interactive, educational exhibit fashioned into a home structure that features practices and products promoting energy efficiency and sustainable building materials as well as environmentally friendly and Pennsylvania-produced products for the home.

The three-room exhibit has a bathroom/laundry area, a kitchen and a living room, all showcasing décor, appliances and building materials that help improve energy efficiency, water conservation, radon awareness, air quality and other staples of environmental awareness. There is also an outdoor space that includes a dog house with green roofing, and a bicycle children can ride to demonstrate that less effort is required to power energy-efficient light bulbs.

The Erie Home and Garden Expo attracts hundreds of national and local exhibitors that include do-it -yourself clinics. A fully furnished and landscaped home will also be built inside the Bayfront Convention Center.

The expo runs from 2 to 8 p.m. on March 14 and 15. On March 16, it is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on March 17, it will be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $6; children 10 and under are free. The Bayfront Convention Center is at 1 Sassafras Pier, Erie.

The DEP at Home exhibit goes hand-in-hand with a series of quarterly webinars, also called DEP at Home, produced by the agency to educate families about energy-efficient and environmentally friendly practices they can implement in their homes. The next webinar, Watch your Waste, will be on Wednesday, April 3, from 7 to 8 p.m.

DEP created the exhibit through a grant provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s State Energy Program.

For more information, visit the Erie Home and Garden Expo website.  For more information about the exhibit, visit the DEP at Home webpage.

3/18/2013