Park City Library will celebrate Earth Day with an Earth Day Weekend, with events that will mark the one-year anniversary of the Sustainability Resource Center.
The fun begins Friday, April 21, and runs through Sunday, April 23, said Kate Mapp, Park City Library’s adult services librarian.
“Last year we unveiled the Sustainability Resource Center on Earth Day, so we decided to host another event to celebrate the center and celebrate Earth,” she said. “These events are great ways to bring awareness to our community, give exposure to our resource center and show how we are connected to nature and Earth.”
The Sustainability Center features a seed library, where people can pick up packets of seeds to plant in their gardens, Mapp said.
“Even in the darkest hours of our year — December and January — people have come in for the seeds,” she said. “They all have filled out the form, telling us how much they love this program.”
The center also includes a real-time, air-quality map where people can see the quality of air in the surrounding region, and a book collection display, Mapp said.
“The books are both for adults and children,” she said. “We are continually cycling in the new books about sustainability and putting the older ones back into their original shelves,” she said.
The first Earth Day Weekend events on the calendar are the toy and plant and seed swaps that run from Friday to Sunday, Mapp said.
“We host toy swaps seasonally in Room 101, and they are done in an open format,” she said. “We encourage members of the public to drop their gently used toys that aren’t being used anymore. If they see another toy they may want, they can take it home.”
The public can return throughout the weekend to drop off toys and see what other toys have been dropped off, according to Mapp.
“We would like to encourage people to make sure the toys are in good working order and that all the pieces are intact and included,” she said. “Anything left over after Sunday will be donated to another organization.”
The plant and seed swap is a similar program to the toy swap, and it will be set up in the library’s Sustainability Center on the first floor, Mapp said.
“We’ll set up tables, and people can drop off and/or pick up house plants, vegetable starts or propagations for outside plants,” she said. “We do ask people not to bring in any invasive species that are harmful to our native plants. And if you aren’t sure what constitutes an invasive species, the Utah State University website (bit.ly/3KVCQIU) has a great resource for what plants are bad and good for our community.”
In addition to plants, people can drop off and pick up pots during the plant swap, Mapp said.
The plant and toy swaps are based on what is known as a shared-economy model, a system that allows communities to reuse resources and items, according to Mapp.
“For centuries libraries have been the perfect shared-economy model,” she said. “These swaps are open and accessible all weekend during library hours. And we want to emphasize that people don’t have to drop anything off in order to take something home. They can just come and take what they want, because we usually have an abundance of leftover items.”
At 3:30 p.m. on Earth Day proper, Saturday, April 22, the Park City Library will host Green Reads, quarterly initiative where the library staff select books that tie in with the mission of the sustainability center.
The chosen book for Saturday’s discussion is Ben Goldfarb’s 2018 book “Eager: The Surprising Life of Beavers and Why They Matter,” a winner of the 2019 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award.
The PEN American Center‘s mission is to unite writers “to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.”
“We co-selected this book with the Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter and Park City Mountain, because they have been pivotal in the beaver dam rehabilitation and construction project on the preserve,” Mapp said. “We also want to emphasize that people don’t have to read the book in order to participate in the event. We just want them to come and contribute to the community discussion.”
For those who don’t have time to read the book, but are interested in additional information about it, the library website contains additional resources, Mapp said.
“We have a link to a podcast (podcast.naturesarchive.com/2021/12/06/beavers/) that features an interview with the author,” she said. “We also have a shorter article (biographic.com/they-will-build-it/) that the author wrote about the book.”
All of the Earth Day programming is helping the Park City Library work towards a certificate from the Sustainable Libraries Initiative, Mapp said.
“This is a national program, and we’re one of the first Utah libraries to start working on the certificate,” she said. “We are doing this by building policies and procedures, and by looking at our daily activities to see how our building and staff could be more sustainable. We’re working with Cecilia Peterson of the Park City Sustainability department on that.”