Earth Day 2023 event in Scranton promotes clean environment

Apr. 22—SCRANTON — Natalie Nagle enjoyed getting her hands dirty at an Earth Day event Saturday at Courthouse Square.

The 7-year-old Greenfield Twp. girl helped make wildflower seed balls to give out from the Lackawanna County Conservation District. After rolling a wet mixture of potting soil and clay into a small ball, Natalie poked in a finger to make a divot, popped in three seeds of either butterfly milkweed, purple coneflower or lanceleaf coreopsis and rolled it all into a ball again. Visitors got to take the balls home to toss into their yards to grow the seeds.

The conservation district was among a dozen or so agencies and groups that participated in the third annual Earth Day event organized by the Lackawanna County Office of Environmental Sustainability and Department of Arts and Culture.

Other participants included Lackawanna County 4H, Scranton Tomorrow, Penn State Master Gardeners, the University of Scranton, Lackawanna Heritage Valley, the city of Scranton, Lackawanna River Conservation Association, Buff City Soap, Taylor Community Library, Everhart Museum, Sierra Club, Pennsylvania American Water and some artists.

"This is a great way for them to meet people, connect with each other, form partnerships and do some outreach," said Nicole Shapiro, recycling coordinator/director of the sustainability office.

Pennsylvania American Water parked a van along North Washington Avenue that served as a rolling water cooler with three sinks dispensing drinking water for visitors to pour into cups or water bottles.

Megan Prynn, a PAW community public relations representative, talked herself hoarse telling passersby all about water, including the water cycle, watershed and water-source protection and stormwater management.

"What we worry about in this area is the runoff," Prynn told a group of young girls. "The cleaner we keep the land, the cleaner the water is. That's the biggest message to get across — protecting the land protects the water."

Earth Day, first held on April 22, 1970, is widely recognized today "as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national and local policy changes," according to earthday.org.

While Earth Day ushered in major environmental laws and improvements, "the fight for a clean environment continues with increasing urgency, as the ravages of climate change become more and more apparent every day," the earthday.org website says.

Meanwhile, microplastics and the per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) group of so-called "forever chemicals" also pose longterm problems.

"They are issues that we really need to address," said Bernie McGurl, executive director of the Lackawanna River Conservation Association. "We're ingesting them (microplastics and PFAS). We're addicted to plastic and it's not good."

The PAW van also dispensed facts about plastic pollution:

Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the Earth four times.

It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade.

Plastic makes up approximately 90% of all the trash floating on the ocean's surface.

Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

Less than 35% of U.S. households recycle.

An average of 46,000 pieces of plastic exist on each square mile of our ocean's surface.

Shapiro hopes the purpose and meaning of Earth Day resonates far and wide.

"We all live here. This is all our planet," Shapiro said. "We all need to do our part and take turns and make sure this is going to last."

Contact the writer: jlockwood@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9100 x5185; @jlockwoodTT on Twitter.