Youngstown, Valley celebrate Earth Day today, Saturday

By Bruce Walton

bwalton@vindy.com

Youngstown

The Mahoning Valley community will have several Earth Day events today and Saturday that will allow people to celebrate the preservation of the environment and help promote a cleaner and sustainable planet.

Springfield Elementary School, 11419 Youngstown-Pittsburgh Road, New Middletown, organized an after-school program from 3:20 to 4:30 p.m. Thursday and today in which students participate in eco-friendly activities organized through a collaborative effort between the Mahoning County Green Team and Springfield Parent-Teacher Organization.

On Saturday, at the Leetonia Community Public Library, 181 Walnut St., families can come out to plant seeds, do Earth Day-related crafts, and learn about recycling and environmentalism.

Lisa Rohrbaugh, library director, said they’ll also take time to honor Jim Lewis, one of their custodians who died last year, with the planting of a tree. Rohrbaugh said a tree would be the most-appropriate gesture for not just Earth Day but because of Lewis’ interest in woodworking.

“He loved wood, and he was a woodworker. He made some beautiful things that he would show us,” Rohrbaugh said. “So we thought [planting] a tree would be very appropriate for him.”

The Whispering Pines District of the Boy Scouts of America will also host the 34th annual Mill Creek MetroParks Earth Day Cleanup on Saturday, led by Mike Kupec, Earth Day cleanup chairman for the Boy Scouts.

The event will have more than 300 participants from Cub Scout packs, Boy and Girl Scout troops and BSA Venturing crews as well as their families cleaning areas of Mill Creek Park from 9 a.m. to noon.

Scouts as young as 7 to their early 20s will go to 18 of the park’s 41 areas to pick up trash and recycle most of the refuse they find. Kupec said they mostly go to areas often neglected where litter sometimes accumulates.

“We try to get them [scouts] in a little further where the normal park cleaners usually don’t pick up. ... A lot of times it doesn’t get tended to since the normal park crews are along the roads,” Kupec said.

Earth Day began in 1970 when Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. senator from Wisconsin, founded the day in order to help promote concern about saving the environment from waste and pollution and depletion of resources.

Now, 46 years later, the day is celebrated by millions of people across 192 countries.