Help your waterways by donating to an organization that works every day to educate, lead volunteers, and provide guidance to local municipalities for cleaner waterways! Partners for Clean Streams is excited to announce our participation in #GivingTuesdayNWO 2021!

#GivingTuesday is a global movement to give back to charities that help make communities better places to live, work, and play. In our case, donations made during #GivingTuesday will help us to better support our many waterways through educational outreach, year-round water quality programs, program materials, and more. 

This year, the event falls on November 30. There are three ways to donate:

1. Donate online through our secure PayPal account.
2. Mail a check to Partners for Clean Streams (P.O. Box 203, Perrysburg, OH 43552) dated November 30 with #GivingTuesday in the memo line.
3. Donate through our Facebook fundraiser. Donations made through Facebook on November 30 may be eligible for Facebook's match program; see program details here.

Please give water a hand on November 30 and donate to PCS on #GivingTuesdayNWO

The Annual General Meeting is coming soon! Watch our social media, or your email, for the dates and how to sign -up! This year we are trying a hybrid format – come if you can or join in online. All Challenge Awards winners from Clean Your Streams Day, PCS partners, and Board Members are invited for discussion, slideshow presentation, and an Awards Ceremony. We will review the programs from the past year and present a summary of our work throughout 2021. We will recognize a Clean Streams Partner and our Challenge Award winners from Clean Your Streams Day!

There will also be a Board Election so if you are interested in serving on the Board, please get in touch with us as soon as possible. We need three new Board members! We look forward to this annual event to share what we do and to acknowledge the partners that make our work possible.

Volunteers persevered through a rainy morning for a successful 25^th Anniversary of Clean Your Streams. Now that we have had some time to sort through soggy data cards, we are excited to offer a more detailed breakdown of the trash volunteers collected.

In total, 479 volunteers collected 8175.85 pounds of trash across 52 sites cover 56 miles of rivers, streams, and creeks. While most volunteers participated in-person on September 25, 2021 marked the return of our remote/virtual kickoff: the option for volunteers to clean up in small groups during the week leading up to Clean Your Streams Day. We broke down our results by remote and in-person kickoffs, and uncovered even more interesting finds!

From September 18-24, 68 remote/virtual volunteers picked up 1,252 pounds of trash from 20 different sites, from the mighty Maumee River in the heart of downtown Toledo, to the scenic headwaters of the Ottawa River in Sylvania.

On September 25, 411 volunteers headed off to 32 sites. These determined water stewards removed at least 6,924 pounds of marine debris, including nearly 3,000 food wrappers, 2,941 cigarette butts, 2,116 plastic bottles, and 14 tires. Students and parents from Toledo Early College High School brought the most volunteers from a single group (105 volunteers!) and removed a staggering 1,202 pounds of trash from just two sites: Highland Park and the former grounds of Libbey High School.

Volunteers’ data cards revealed even more interesting finds: plastic vampire teeth, a circular saw blade, a broken IKEA table, multiple car hubcaps, porcelain dishes, and a hotel key card. We are still left scratching our heads about the pile of 70 empty Teddy Graham containers found by one volunteer group in Oregon!

Thank you to each and every one of our volunteers. If you have not yet picked up your Silver Anniversary t-shirt, let us know what size you would like and when you would like to stop by our office.

Microplastics are plastics that are less than 5 mm in size and a lot about them is unknown. Research has shown that microplastics can cause physical harm to wildlife when ingested. Microplastics can absorb other chemicals such as trace metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides, and some pathogens. Initial research has also suggested that plastic additives can contribute to disruption in the endocrine system and possibly cancer. Currently, there are five types categorized by the USGS: fibers, foam, fragments, beads/pellets, and film. After a study of microplastics in the Great Lakes Region published in 2016 from USGS, they found that foam microplastics were present in Maumee and Portage Rivers.

Foams are considered to be expanded polystyrene foam- meaning it is a plastic in a fluffy form, polystyrene can be solid like a water bottle or expanded in foam form. Foam can be items like Floral foam, foam coolers, food containers, cups, plates, and packaging can contribute to this kind of microplastic in our waterways. Reducing or refusing foams are a primary way to reduce foams from ending up in our waterways.

We are proud partners on the Trash Trappers for a Cleaner Toledo Project for Trash Free Waters Toledo. Toledo is installing trash trappers to take care of the microplastics and plastic marine debris before it becomes microplastics in the water while we help remove the marine debris on land before it enters our waterways.