Thank You! Thank You! Thank you! The PCS staff and planning team could not be more pleased with how the 17th Annual Clean Your Streams Day went on Saturday the 21st of September. As part of the International Coastal Cleanup and Ohio’s Coastweeks program, Clean Your Streams had 941 volunteers this year. We worked from 7 kickoff locations and spread out along 33 miles on the banks of Swan Creek, Ottawa River, Maumee River and creeks and ditches flowing into Maumee Bay and Lake Erie. Volunteers collected 16,366 pounds of trash, including 914 bags, 96.5 tires and many odd things. To name just a few odd finds, volunteers found a sewing machine, couch, sleeping bag, kid’s slide & pool, toddler-sized mattress, toilet, table-top record player, bikes and much, much more. After hauling shopping carts, dozens of tires and much more out of the rivers, volunteers celebrated cleaner rivers with an Appreciation Picnic at the Lucas County Fairgrounds.
A huge congratulations goes to the groups that received our Challenge Awards at the Appreciation Picnic. These self-reported challenges are meant to encourage excitement about protecting our rivers. Large, not bagged items were converted to number of equivalent bags. Our top winners are as follows:
Youth (non-college age)
- Battle of the Bag: Toledo ZOOTeens (82 bags)
- Awesome Effort: Toledo ZOOTeens (3.28 bags per person)
- Most Volunteers: YWCA Teen Outreach Program (65 volunteers)
Collegiate
- Battle of the Bags: Habitat for Humanity, UT Chapter (95 bags)
- Awesome Effort: Theta Tau, University of Toledo (3 bags per person)
- Most Volunteers: Habitat for Humanity, UT Chapter (45 volunteers)
Organization:
- Ohio EPA (19 volunteers)
Corporate:
- First Solar (65 volunteers)
Change for Change
- Toledo Environmental Services (over 16 pounds of change)
A special thank you goes to the planning team which includes Mariyln DuFour, Patrick Lawrence, Katie Rousseau, Erika Buri, Brian Miller, Bob Neubert, Matt Beil, Stephanie Kuck, Andrea Beard, Don Nelson, Bill Buri, Cherie Blair, Terry Shankland and PCS Staff.
Thank you again to everyone who participated in Clean Your Streams and joined us as Partners for Clean Streams. You may have come with another group, business or volunteer organization, but on Clean Your Streams Day, you were a Partner, with us, for cleaner rivers. We look forward to maintaining that partnership in the future. One way to do so is by sending your pictures to Ava@PartnersforCleanStreams.org or upload them on our Clean Your Streams webpage or Tweet them using #CYS17.We look forward to seeing everyone next year for Clean Your Streams 2014!