Clean-up Day 2020: Our Most Impactful Yet

Advocating for clean water and environmental stewardship is the reason we do what we do. Every year we host a Maumee River Clean-up Day event where we put this mission into practice with the help of friends and colleagues.  Our goal is to clean up the riverbank, and this year, the riverbed itself.

Without a doubt, this year’s event was our most impactful one yet. Fort Wayne recently lowered the river water level enabling BCS staffers Grant and Davis to break from the riverbank trash collection team to retrieve tires from the river. An overflowing pickup truck load was retrieved and properly disposed of. We even found a big racing tire – how did that get in there??

Riverbank Trash Collection

We took a cue from last years successes in dispatching small teams to numbered areas along the River Greenway to collect trash. Each team pulled several bags of trash and strange objects from the riverbank and public access area. Thanks to Bob Kiel from Ferguson Advertising for helping Lana take on section 1!  We would love to see more local companies come out and join us next year.

TAKEAWAYS

Although we have done this for four years now, it is always surprising how much of an impact we can make in just a couple of hours. Our little section of the river is better off for the time being. There is still a ton of work to be done for our waterways. Think of how different the world could be if we all gave a tiny amount of our time to reverse the human pollution (and if people didn’t just throw out their beer bottles…..).  Another noteworthy lesson from this year’s effort is that Tire Barn charges only $3.65 per tire for proper disposal, there should be no reason to toss tires in the water like this.

Thanks for reading and we hope you can join us next year or do your own thing to make our waterways just a little cleaner.