Library giving visitors an opportunity celebrate Earth Day

Earth Day is observed annually on April 22 as a reminder to protect and appreciate the environment. The official theme for 2024 is Planet vs Plastics, with earthday.org calling “for the end of plastics for the sake of human and planetary health, demanding a 60 per cent reduction in the production of plastics by 2040 and an ultimate goal of building a plastic-free future for generations to come.” Pick up these adult non-fiction titles from your local library to learn more about the impact of plastics, climate change, and Mother Earth.

Learn about the prevalence of plastic waste in the sea and its devastating effects on marine life from Holly Hogan in Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist (2023).

In Eve O. Schaub’s memoir

Year of No Garbage: Recycling Lies, Plastic Problems, and One Woman’s Trashy Journey to Zero Waste (2023), the author and her family try to live garbage-free lives in 2020, exposing the ways society makes generating zero waste impossible.

Ready to try saying goodbye to plastic yourself? Check out Say Goodbye to Plastic: A Survival Guide for Plastic-Free Living (2020).

If you’re looking to read the latest guides to the history and future of climate change, start with Elizabeth Kolbert’s H is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z (2024).

Learn about environmental policy and the impact of the fossil fuel industry on climate change from climate scientist Michael Mann in The

New Climate

War (2021).

For a historical look, consider Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth (2019), about the decade from 1979-1989 when climate change denialism and misinformation began.

Interested in connecting with and protecting nature this Earth Day?

Pick up Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013) for essays on botany, natural history, and the injustices perpetrated on Indigenous Peoples and the Land. For more nature writing about human connection to plants, read Jessica J. Lee’s Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging (2024) and Daniel Lewis’s Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future (2024).

The library doesn’t just have books!

You can stream movies and television like Politics of Climate Change (2019) and Necessity

(Part I): Oil, Water & Climate Resistance (2023) with instant access via Hoopla.

If these recommendations aren’t enough to keep you occupied on Earth Day and beyond, stop in and ask the library’s friendly staff for more!