Liberty Paper, Inc. (LPI), has had some excitement recently, as they planted trees at City Park to belatedly honor Earth Day, and invited Becker students to tour their facility.

Tree Planting

One week ago Thursday, early in the day before the weather turned stormy, Liberty Paper Employees gathered at Becker City Park in order to plant trees. 

After an outbreak of Oak Wilt in the area, the park was in need of some new, healthy trees. 

Elisa Wright, Environmental Health and Safety Engineer, said that the group decided to go with six trees this year, all of which were more mature than what was planted last year.

Tom Murphy, technical manager at LPI, said the original plan was to plant the trees in April as a part of LPI’s environmental week, which corresponds with Earth Day. Unfortunately, the ground was still frozen, and the planting had to be pushed back. 

Teaming up with the LPI staff were some city employees. Chris Lisson, Public Works and Parks Assistant Director, said LPI has a great partnership with the city, and the two entities enjoy collaborating when they can. LPI approached the city with the idea to plant new trees, which Lisson said will help after the forest was diminished by Oak Wilt. 

LPI hopes to continue this tradition in the future, though they may choose a different location next time around.

Field Trip Day

Becker Primary School first graders were invited to tour the LPI facility on Monday of this week. 

“We never have this much commotion,” said LPI’s Kelly Schustak, “but it’s nice to have the chatter of the kiddos today!”

All nine of Becker’s first grade classes toured the facility in three groups. The students were shown how paper is recycled in the facility in a live presentation, getting a chance to see each step of the process and even try a few of the steps for themselves, on a small scale. The students were then shown around the facility, where they had a chance to see all the machines in action. 

LPI used to give these tours annually, but shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, they were once again happy to welcome the first graders to the facility, and hope to resume doing so annually. This year, LPI was unable to invite Becker’s sixth grade students, as they have in the past, but Schustak said they hoped to bring them back in the near future, as well.