EASTON, Pa. — A movie screening next month aims to engage residents in environmental conservation and bring some life to the city’s 175-year-old cemetery.
A screening of “Microplastic Madness” will be from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. July 10 at Historic Easton Cemetery, 401 N. 7th St.
Presented in partnership with the Nurture Nature Center, it’s the city’s first free Sustainability Movie Night, an effort organizers said aims to bring the community together for conservation education.
The event, which will include an educational program from Northampton Community College about microplastics, falls during Plastic Free July, an international effort to lessen plastic pollution.
“Within the city of Easton, we're uniquely positioned on the confluence with three major waterways within our area: the Bushkill, the Delaware and the Lehigh, and we have some responsibility to make sure we do our part in keeping those rivers clean.”Brandon Sullivan, Easton's sustainability coordinator
“I think that education for the community is vital,” Easton Sustainability Coordinator Brandon Sullivan said.
“Within the city of Easton, we're uniquely positioned on the confluence with three major waterways within our area: the Bushkill, the Delaware and the Lehigh, and we have some responsibility to make sure we do our part in keeping those rivers clean.”
The microplastic problem
Plastics are used across many industries, as diverse as medical and food safety. While there are benefits to using plastics, they become a problem when they can’t be recycled.
“There's all that waste that builds up, and it doesn't biodegrade and can't be reused,” Nurture Nature Center Science Director Kathryn A. Semmens said.
“That's the big issue, and one that we are trying to communicate with others.
“Plastics have a lot more of an impact than just the benefit that they provide that we might use on a daily basis, and so, not necessarily to demonize the benefits, but to use them conscientiously and to understand what those impacts are so that you can be an informed consumer.”
Because plastics don’t decompose, over time they break down into smaller pieces, called microplastics, that can contaminate water and seep into the food chain.
The tiny particles, less than 5mm long, or smaller than a grain of rice, have emerged as a priority environmental issue over the past few years.
According to a January article from Stanford Medicine, microplastics have been found in 1,300 species, including throughout the human body — in the brain, testicles, heart, stomach, lymph nodes and placenta.
Research into the health effects continues, but “evidence is growing that this exposure could be harmful,” according to the report.
PennEnvironment's testing has found microplastics in water samples in Lehigh County. A March 2021 survey of waterways showed microplastics in the Lehigh River, Little Lehigh Creek and Saucon Creek.
To lessen plastic pollution, municipalities across the United States have instituted plastic bag bans, as well as similar efforts to tamp down on single-use plastics.
While there are currently no plastic bag bans in the Lehigh Valley, environmental officials in Bethlehem recently launched a survey for local restaurants to gauge interest in moving away from single-use items.
‘Not a doom-and-gloom’
An award-winning documentary, “Microplastic Madness” centers around a fifth-grade class from Brooklyn, New York, investigating plastic pollution and solutions, such as instituting a plastic-free lunch.
“I think the strength of this movie is, it goes through the lens of the elementary school children and then focuses on that fifth-grade class group that made the policy action or the active choice in the elementary school,” Sullivan said.
“But it's a very accessible movie because it goes through their lens, rather than the lens of a world-renowned PhD scientist or something like that, where sometimes the terminology or sometimes things may be a little more complicated when they're discussed or presented.”
Semmens described the movie, which is open to all ages, as a “positive film.”
“It's not a doom-and-gloom, because we want to keep it positive and hopeful and that people can do something about this,” she said.
“And it's not just that you are resigned to living in a world of plastic. There are alternatives, there are things that we can do to improve our local communities.”
NCC has participated in Plastic Free July for at least three years, Semmens said.
“I think it's really smart that they target a particular month, and they also gamify it so you can, as an individual, you can go on and take a challenge," she said.
"And you get weekly emails throughout July that help you meet that challenge and read [about] others."
This year's campaign, with the theme “Small steps, big difference,” encourages participants to avoid a particular single-use plastic item or avoid plastic items altogether.
‘Bring life to death’
After coming up with the idea for the screening a couple months ago, Sullivan investigated both Scott Park and the amphitheater at Riverside Park, both on Larry Holmes Drive, as possible locations.
However, the large screen and projector didn’t fit.
“My next thought was Easton Cemetery,” he said. “What's the biggest space we have downtown or in that area? And that was the first thought that I had.”
At 84 acres, the cemetery is the city’s largest greenspace. Founded in 1849 and on the National Register of Historic Sites, it is the resting place for more than 42,000 people, according to the cemetery’s website.
“This has been done in other cemeteries,” Sullivan said. “In my head, though, I don't see why we can't bring life to death, in a way.
“As long as we're respectful and appropriate to the fact that it is a cemetery, being able to have education programs and a large green space in a city that has it, we might as well utilize it, especially when the cemetery is more than willing to accept us for this event.”
Only in recent years have cemeteries been viewed as solemn places of quiet mourning. Historically, some cemeteries in the United States were treated more like public parks.
Philadelphia’s Laurel Hill Cemetery has been the setting for movie nights for more than a decade.
This year’s “Cinema in the Cemetery” series, held by Friends of Laurel Hill and the Philadelphia Film Society, includes 1992’s horror-comedy “Death Becomes Her,” scheduled for July 11.
Semmens noted that cemeteries can be gathering places, shedding the negative connotations often associated with them.
“I think it's really cool that we celebrate that and use that green space and highlight that resource that we have,” she said.
