What have we accomplished, thanks to you? In 2021, we modified our programs to include more opportunities to participate at a distance, while also phasing back safe, in-person programming. Clean Your Streams 365 saw 15 sites cleaned in 2019, 27 cleaned in 2020, and 62 cleaned in 2021 – about four times as many sites across two years! We offered more frequent Get the Lead Out clean-ups, allowing more volunteers to participate at more sites than the previous two years. PCS also had the opportunity to expand our marine debris prevention programs: more Storm Drain Marking, more Reel in and Recycle fishing line bins installed, and getting back to opportunities for education and outreach.

How can you help us maintain our momentum into 2022 and beyond? Going beyond Giving Tuesday, keep in mind that you can support PCS through your holiday purchases by linking your Kroger card or Amazon Smiles account. These services give a percentage of your purchases to keep your water clean, clear, and safe, at no extra cost to you! You can link your Kroger Plus Card with the instructions on our website, and connect your Amazon account to support us by searching “Partners for Clean Streams” on AmazonSmile.

Maumee FLOWS offers Toledo Public and urban charter school students a new view of their local river, focused on water science and stewardship. Teachers accepted into the program received special training on Maumee River geography, ecology, and water sampling during a summer workshop, and a special science cruise aboard the Sandpiper tour boat. The program also provides educational materials and stewardship project supplies.

This autumn, five middle and high school classes participated in their own Sandpiper science cruises. Students had the opportunity to test water chemistry, including pH, dissolved oxygen, and the presence of nitrates and phosphates, as well as water biology, sampling river sediment for macroinvertebrates and the water column for zooplankton.

Throughout the season, Partners for Clean Streams provided staff support for the science cruises, as well as instruction and supplies for stewardship projects. So far, classes have held two storm drain marking programs, and two Clean Your Streams 365 marine debris clean-ups.

Although colder weather has us putting a pause on outdoor activities, Partners for Clean Streams looks forward to lending our support once more in the spring of 2022.

Whether you’re a volunteer, donor, stream clean-up organizer, Clean Your Streams Challenge Winner, or a community partner – you are invited! Doors open at 5:30pm at the Glass City Metropark Pavilion for dinner, refreshments, and conversation. At 6:00pm, virtual participants will join and we’ll begin our meeting with a summary of our 2021 programs and projects. We’ll present awards to recognize Challenge Winners and Environmental Stewardship, and conduct annual business with the election of new Board members.

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.  

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.

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.

#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 storm drains in our neighborhood lead straight into our waterways without any treatment. This means anything but pure rainwater is a potential contaminant that negatively impacts water quality, as stormwater runoff often carries nutrients, sediment, trash, and E. coli with it—that includes leaves! Plus, leaves in the storm drain clog our drains and can cause unnecessary flooding and harm to our city’s pipes. Storm Drain Marking is an easy process to notify our neighbors that what goes into the storm drains comes out in our waterways untreated. To learn more, and pledge to keep your storm drain litter and leaf-free, check out the Toledo Lake Erie, Clear Choices, Clean Water website.

Once winter hits Storm Drain Marking will go into hibernation until spring 2022–when the weather permits us to be able to either stencil a painted message or glue a medallion to our storm drains. We will supply all of the equipment; all we need from you is a location so we can get it pre-approved and your waivers.  Fill out this form to let us know you are interested.

Fragment microplastics are the result of plastic items such as bottles, toys, cups, utensils, and breaking down in our water supply. From the USGS study, researchers found that in water run-off events, or times when it rained, there were significantly more fragments out water supply. We are 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.  

Our sites are along the Maumee River, one of the largest Great Lakes tributaries in the U.S. As an inland cleanup, we have always been a bit different. Instead of flip flops and pretty beaches in our pictures, we have volunteers digging water heaters out of the mud, shopping carts out of the muck, and hauling countless “other” items not listed on the data card up the banks of the creeks.

Our sites range from little roadside ditches (important capillaries of the wider stream network) to our downtown port with barges in the background. In our wide mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas, cleaning the smallest ditches to the widest mouth of our largest tributary, provides a connection to our waterways, and to our great Lake that is tangible and visible to people often isolated from inland water. We clean up marine debris before it makes it to the actual “marine” environment. But what is not different from every other cleanup in the world, is our volunteer’s desire year after year to make their community a cleaner and prettier place to enjoy our waterways and to make a difference, one cigarette butt, and food wrapper at a time.

A lot has changed in 25 years, while much has stayed the same. In 2020, like everyone, we had to adapt. Our cleanup became a ten-day hybrid of in-person, smaller teams and those who did a clean-up somewhere on their own with the Clean Swell app. Together we still made an impact – 255 volunteers attended in-person cleanups and 176 completed their own cleanup during September across 79 different sites, removing nearly 17,000 pounds!

With the virtual-remote option volunteers could participate, in whatever way they were comfortable, and to know they were not alone to others who were also cleaning their streams. We noticed that cleanups happened in areas we had not been before, on a wider swath of Northwest Ohio (and southeast Michigan!) Some families even did repeat cleanups.

We again approached this year as a hybrid, but rather than the virtual-remote option being an adaptation we were forced to make, we see it as a wider net we can cast to be inclusive and flexible. In doing this, we are able to provide an opportunity for as many people as possible to participate. In a time when we all want to feel connected to our environment, to each other, and to our greater community we felt that this was an integral option to include in Clean Your Streams Day.

Overall these years, what sticks with us is the volunteers, both young and old(er), who come and make the connections that they can be active stewards of our rivers. And some of those kids even grow up to work in the environmental field too! So, for us, Clean Your Streams is more than a cleanup – it is a way to connect people to our rivers and streams, and each other.