In an effort to promote reuse and waste prevention, the St. Louis Park Rec Center will host an event to exchange entertainment items to give them a new purpose, according to Emily Barker, a solid waste specialist.

“It’s not first nature for a lot of people (to reuse). It’s still easier for people to go to Target or on Amazon and order things that way,” Barker said. “What we’re trying to really encourage is to get people thinking about things you can reuse and share with the community, and we want to be a resource for that as much as we can.”

Spanish teacher Valerie Weaver said she thinks the event will benefit the environment. 

“I think this will keep stuff out of landfills, at least for a little bit longer, or it might just help people think about ways they can donate things rather than just throwing them away,” Weaver said. 

Rec Center employee sophomore Sidney Prince said she thinks the change will exceed in reducing the amount of waste people create.  

“I think this will be good at recycling things and it’ll help people use less plastic whenever they want to buy something new, (so) they could instead buy it used,” Prince said.

Barker said anybody can participate in the event, which in turn will hopefully make the event better. 

“The nice thing about our event is that we open it to anybody (who) can come. The nice thing about that is it makes things more accessible for people regardless of economic status or income and provides them with new things at no cost,” Barker said.

Weaver said she thinks the event will be good for the St. Louis Park community by bringing people together and giving them the opportunity to learn about each other.

“I think people getting together in a space and sharing is always a good thing that benefits the community and you can see different perspectives of what people do, watch and listen to and you find commonalities that you didn’t know you had,” Weaver said.

Prince said this will be beneficial for children by teaching them the values and positive impacts of recycling.

“I think this is a really good opportunity for the community to be able to interact with other people and have kids learn from these sort of things,” Prince said.

Participants can bring books, games, music and movies to swap out for other used items. The city will then take any items left at the end of the day and donate them . The event is scheduled to occur 7 p.m. Jan. 22 in the banquet room.