For much of its three decades, Everything Natural in Clarks Summit had been an outpost of earthly idealism and wholesome eating.
At the second annual Clarks Summit Earth Day Celebration on Saturday, the health food store is just another part of the borough's landscape.
The borough and its stores banded together to promote recycling, repurposing, health and conservation. The event was one of many around the region that marked the weekend before Earth Day on Monday, by cleaning up parks, picking up trash and getting ready for the warm weather.
Barry Kaplan, who has operated Everything Natural in the borough for 28 years, is thrilled that Clarks Summit as a community would come together to celebrate Earth Day.
"Natural food, recycling, sustainability, environmental stewardship, organic, you name it, have all become things that everyone sees value in and that more people than ever make part of daily life," he said.
In Factoryville, volunteers collected fallen limbs, raked mulch and spruced up Christy Mathewson Park on Saturday. In a town with just one public works employee, borough shade tree commission Chairwoman Liz Ratchford asked civic groups and families to "adopt" a portion of the park and maintain it through the year. One of those families is Doug and Jan Engle, who have taken care of space next to a pavilion for 12 years.
"This is really about pitching in and taking responsibility for a small part of something larger," Ms. Engle said.
In Scranton, several Lackawanna River groups pooled people and resources for a Bridge to Bridge cleanup, removing litter and debris from river areas between the Parker Street and Sanderson Avenue bridges. Downriver, about 20 Riverside Elementary fourth-graders and their parents picked up assorted litter and a deflated raft.
"We found no survivors," teacher Shawn Murphy joked.
Contact the writer: dfalchek@timesshamrock.com