Case Study

How to Create a Greener Earth through Community Involvement

By CD Tag and Storage LLC

How do we strike a chord with patrons to increase genuine traffic in their local library and encourage them and the library to be more proactive on environmental “green” efforts at the same time?

As the economy continues to sag, the library use has been on the up-swing as institutions cater to modern day entertainment and education. The libraries have become a haven for many people; exactly how every library would love to be viewed. With wallets being tight, people are turning to libraries for their entertainment fix, at no cost (in most libraries). Why should they pay up to $5 for a DVD from Blockbuster or other video rental stores, when you can keep yourself entertained with a DVD from the Library? The problem lies that within the idea of “free” from the library, patrons tend to forget that piece of media still cost the library a lot of money to acquire. When it’s “free”, the tendency of liability comes off their shoulders. The problem is, with increase use comes increase abuse, intentional or not. People carelessly, or without knowledge abuse library items. The most common neglect is with the libraries media collection being dirty, scratched and unplayable.

For many libraries the ability to maintain and repair their collection, while eliminating replacement costs, have become a real issue. Many libraries see disc repair machines more then a luxury to have, but a true necessity. Libraries feel that they want the patrons to be happy and revisit their libraries for the disc collection and more.

You might think though how does that really involve the community and make us a “Green” place.

Libraries see the value in using disc repair units not only to maintain their own disc collections, but for their fundraising aspects. How? Janice Faust of CD Tag Storage explains, “The idea is to promote to the local community, especially schools, to engage supporting the library by bringing in their own scratched discs to be fixed for either a small donation, and/or donating their unwanted discs. I would like to put in detail how this benefits the libraries. First, donating unwanted discs keeps the plastic out of the landfills, by repairing and recycling the disc, thus keeping our planet a green place. Secondly, because of the shrinking budgets, libraries are looking for new ways to raise funds. The disc donation allows the library to clean and repair these discs to either add to their collection or sell at Book/Media sales in an effort to raise more funds.

"Recently a Rhode Island library I worked with offered the repair service to their patrons for a small fee at their fundraising day using the VMI 3500 disc repair unit. The result was exciting! One patron brought 19 discs from home to be repaired. I have found the VMI 3500 machines are the best fit for this type of fundraising event. They are very easy to use, fast and extremely inexpensive to operate, costing .06 per disc, and green being that it uses non-hazardous and non-toxic chemicals, unlike other repair options available. The cleaning cycle is as little as 30 seconds so the libraries can do the repair right in front of the patron while they wait! The disc raising ideas encompass working with local community and schools to organize a disc recycling day; flyers in student backpacks or advertising in school and local papers, which can offer the children a coupon for a free disc repair when they donate a disc. Every child has a game disc, PS2, X-Box or Wii or music or DVD that they would love to repair so they could play it again. Parents would love to repair the often expensive games rather than replace them and get rid of their unwanted discs!”

A regular local patron relates her feelings, “I know that it is important to me that we do all we can to keep our planet green. I make it a point to instill these principals with my kids. That is why my kids and I regularly support our local libraries efforts especially with repairing discs. I know that there is a lot of e-waste now-a-days and this is the one thing that we can do to help. I know that these types of efforts keep us coming back to the library”, comments Sarah Diotte.

A recent statistics shows that over 4 million computer disks are thrown away each day, with a degrading time of over 500 years. That is 1.5 billion discs in landfills each year. eWaste is a growing problem because of consumers constant disregard towards technology. Usually most eWaste is disposed of before it stops working or customers not aware that it can be repaired! It is no surprise then that many libraries are exploring these types of endeavors since it not only saves the library money and frustrations, brings in more patron use, and more importantly creates a greener earth through community involvement.