Lost: One 20-year-old wooden chest filled with trash; possibly buried at the base of a cucumber magnolia tree on Hartman Green.

If found: Contact the Sustainability Committee at Franklin & Marshall College.

Reward: The gratitude of the F&M community, and the satisfaction of making a small step forward in the advancement of renewable resources.

The wooden chest was wrapped in a garbage bag and buried on April 22, 1990, as part of Earth Day activities at the college.

"But now we're not sure where it is," Sarah Dawson, director of the Wohlsen Center for the Sustainable Environment at F&M, said Tuesday.

Reports on the whereabouts of the time capsule varied 20 years ago, she said. Some accounts placed it in Buchanan Park, while others said the box was buried in the lawn in front of Old Main.

Articles in the Intelligencer Journal and Lancaster New Era agreed the location was at the base of a cucumber magnolia sapling on Hartman Green, the common area behind the Steinman Student Center.

"The specifics were not nailed down very well," Dawson said.

There was very little metal sealed within the wooden box, she said, which means a metal detector wouldn't help find the right spot.

Anyone who was there when the capsule was buried and recalls the exact location is asked to call the Wohlsen Center at 358-5870.

Deadline for finding the green wooden box is April 20, when officials plan to unearth the capsule as part of Sustainability Week at the college.

"Tim (Bechtel, professor of geosciences) is confident we will know where it is by then," Dawson said.

"They will be doing some extensive searching to pinpoint its location … so we don't look like fools when we dig up some random pile of trash instead of the intended pile of trash."

That's right, trash. The capsule was filled with the leavings of society to underscore the damage people are doing to the environment.

Jennifer Recklet, an F&M freshman in 1990 who selected the capsule's contents, said then it was "symbolic of taking all the things that are screwing up our environment and burying them."

Efforts to locate Recklet after 20 years were not immediately successful.

Contents of the chest included plastics, cigarettes, Styrofoam, an aerosol can, a disposable razor, a plastic syringe and a disposable diaper.

"The whole idea was to bury things that were considered toxic or weren't very environmentally friendly, in the hopes that when we dug it up in 20 years we'd have some better solutions," Dawson said Tuesday.

There also was a scrapbook of articles related to environmental issues of the day and a letter asking people today to determine if the ecological woes of 1990 have been solved.

"Absolutely we've gotten better. We have a long way to go, though," Dawson said.

"There have been some great inventions and innovations in the past 20 years — there has been progress in terms of renewable resources, biofuels, solar and wind power — but there's a long way to go before we're a truly sustainable society."

Earth Day on April 22 will mark 40 years since the first Earth Day in 1970. F&M, led by Dawson and senior Shawn Jenkins, is planning a full week's worth of activities surrounding the event, which will be announced on the college Web site, fandm.edu.

Jenkins said he came across a reference to the time capsule while doing a research project in college archives. Since then, he's been working with Dawson and Bechtel to track down the X that marks the spot.

"I've talked to two students who were here at the time and were involved in its burial," Jenkins said Tuesday.

"They don't quite remember, but they've given me two overlapping locations. I think we've narrowed it down."

The time capsule will be reburied for another 20 years, Dawson said — this time with contents related to current environmental innovations. Specific items have not yet been chosen, she said.

"But this time, we're going to put a little marker with it," she said.

tknapp@lnpnews.com