best overall
Story By Mike Overall

“Eco-friendly” and “green” are two words that some may not associate with the public library but the library is a lot “greener” than one would expect.

When you consider the fact that the Jonesboro Public Library, located at 315 West Oak, is also the headquarters for the Crowley’s Ridge Regional Library, with branches located throughout Craighead and Poinsett counties, the library assumes even more of a presence, in its own special way, as a weapon of sorts against mankind’s besmirching of this jewel of a planet.

With the library’s new “Gateway” program now in operation, this means that citizens in a multiplicity of counties may obtain a library card with which to check out a limited number of books, thus the renewable aspect of what the eminent historian David McCullough once called the greatest public institution in American history – the free-lending library – is now more eco-friendly and green than ever before.

David A. Eckert, assistant director of the library, is “high” on the library’s status as a renewable, if not purely energy renewable, source. It’s a center where the give-and-take of library materials contributes to the common welfare of those millions of Americans who seek to preserve for future generations their celestial home for human habitation.

“It may seem farfetched at times, but our library, with all its resources at hand for our public, is a “green’ institution that contributes mightily to the American population’s battle against the desecration of our planet. We are-we represent-in our own special way, an exchange, if you will, of materials whose shelf life continues far beyond their normal usage. It’s really quite simple: patrons check out books and other materials, then return them for other patrons to utilize over a period of what may constitute years.”

In addition to recycling the literally thousands of cardboard boxes in which the library receives its materials on an almost daily basis, the library also recycles all paper items and aluminum cans, Eckert said, “which means that we as an institution are doing our level best to assure that the library is as eco-friendly as we can make it.” Even the children’s department often makes crafts out of used items such as empty toilet tissue rolls, paper towel tubes, or such items as scraps of cloth and buttons.