Illinois waterway cleanup takes local action against global garbage
It might be a reach to get a high schooler to understand how clearing trash from a river can help the world's oceans, but that's exactly what a waterway cleanup taking place across the state aims to do.
The cleanup, with a second-annual Naperville event scheduled for Sept. 15, helps make the local-global connection for students in the Illinois Global Scholar certificate program.
Naperville Central High School teacher Randy Smith, who helped create the Global Scholar program with colleague Seth Brady and educators across the state, says the hands-on nature of the cleanup should make global issues with trash in waterways real to suburban students.
"Things are connected, and this hopefully can illustrate that to them," Smith said about the cleanup, scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon Sept. 15 at Knoch Knolls park, 320 Knoch Knolls Road.
Students may be aware of restaurants committing to stop using plastic straws, but might not understand why. Using watershed literacy materials, Smith said he plans to teach about the connections among trash, local waterways and the worldwide issue of plastic pollution.
"If it's in a gutter or a drainage ditch or a creek, it's going to end up ultimately in the ocean," Smith said, where micro-particles might be eaten by fish, potentially damaging the human food supply. "Here's a way that you can take some local action that keeps it out of the DuPage River to the Illinois to the Missippipi to the Gulf (of Mexico)."
The Naperville event is part of Illinois Waterway Cleanup Week, and the local educators planning it have partnered with regional and national organizations.
Partners include the Ocean Conservancy, which works to protect oceans from global challenges; American Rivers, a national advocacy group; Illinois Sierra Club; Prairie Rivers Network, based in Champaign; The Conservation Foundation, based in Naperville; Naperville Masonic Lodge; Naperville Education Foundation; and DuPage Education Foundation.
The Conservation Foundation hosts the DuPage River Sweep each spring, and Jan Roehll, DuPage County program director, said 800 volunteers this year cleaned 61 miles of shoreline, removing 9 tons, or 18,000 pounds, of trash.
She said stats like that prove how much it helps when people care for their rivers and remove garbage.
"If it doesn't get cleaned up, all that's going to end up in the Gulf (of Mexico) and in the rivers, and its pollutants," Roehll said. "Those plastics break down and they're getting into the wildlife."
Roehll said she's coordinating locations for participants to focus their work. She said most sites will be on Naperville or Bolingbrook park district property, while some will be ponds near businesses. Even pond water flows through sewers to streams, rivers, the mighty Mississippi and the Gulf. And even pond water is susceptible to trash.
"Especially in commercial areas, it'll accumulate over the summer," Roehll said. "Now the brush sometimes prevents the debris from blowing into the rivers. Once the winter comes and everything dies down, there's just a free flow."
Smith said he's still recruiting student clubs from Naperville Central and adult civic organizations to join in this year's cleanup. For details or to participate, contact him at rsmith@naperville203.org.
For people who want to help, but aren't available Sept. 15, Smith said there's a way.
"Hey, walk your subdivision," he said, and pick up trash along the way, focusing near sewer inlets. "If it's in the gutter, it's going somewhere unless you pick it up."