Tag: Trash

Fewer Plastic Bags and Styrofoam Pieces, Hurray!  Green Towson Alliance helps with Stream Cleanups for the 9th year in a row

by Carol Newill

Literally tons and tons of trash have been collected at sites along the Herring Run and tributaries to the Jones Falls in the 9 years that Green Towson Alliance has been recruiting and helping community leaders and volunteers.

This spring, fewer plastic bags and less styrofoam than usual were found at several of the 9 stream cleanup sites. Clearly, recent laws meant to minimize such pollution are working!

However, 136 bags of trash have been removed from 9 stream sites so far this spring. Sadly, most was plastic bottles and other plastics, as well as some cloth and metal items and 2 local street signs.

Towson University students with trash they pulled from the stream.

Where did all that trash come from? As our storms become more extreme, more of the trash from our streets and parking lots washes into the storm drains and then into the streams!

Girl Scouts pulling trash out of a tributary of the Herring Run tributary.

Volunteer participation has been terrific, as 198 adults and 33 children participated in the cleanups this spring so far. 17 Girl Scouts from Troops #1152, #04151and #02294 cleaned a long stretch of stream and its wide ravine. 78 Towson University students from Impact TU Day and many children from a variety of Towson-area schools accompanied their parents at other sites. County Councilmember Mike Ertel helped at several locations, too.

Baltimore County Councilman Mike Ertel working with neighbors to clean this Towson stream.

Teams at 4 sites removed not only trash but also invasive plants, ranging from English Ivy and Porcelainberry vines to garlic mustard and prickly multiflora rosa.

A volunteer clips invasive porcelain berry vines from a streamside tree.

We thank all the volunteers and especially their Site Leaders:  Christine Horel Accardo, Anne Estes, Adreon Hubbard, Berni Kroll, Barbara Lewis, Janice Millard, Beth Miller, Lilly Richardson, Holly Sebastian, Bob Simon, Mike Stopford, Diane Topper.

Baltimore County Council Chair Izzy Patoka with volunteers at a stream cleanup which hauled trash and a massive logjam out of the Roland Run stream in Ruxton.

Two more sites are scheduled for cleanup next month, in Wiltondale and in Fellowship Forest. To help on a weekend morning soon, contact GTA at https://greentowsonalliance.org/contact/

Volunteers Cleared Out 4.3 Thousand Pounds of Trash from Towson Streams This Spring

198 volunteers from neighborhoods all over Towson helped to clean up 4,300 pounds of trash from tributaries of the Herring Run stream in March and April. Green Towson Alliance organized the cleanups as part of Project Clean Stream for the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.

A neighbor cleans trash from the stream at Overlook Park.

Neighbors know first-hand about the trash they see in their neighborhood streams, and many of them volunteered to help clean it up. Some of the trash is accidentally or purposely thrown into stream beds, but much of it is washed from roads or sidewalks into streams during a heavy rain. If it’s not taken out, the trash will make its way down our rivers to the Chesapeake Bay.

Several terrific crews of Towson University students, who were taking part in University’s The Big Event, were bussed by the University to several clean-up sites.

Towson University students joined neighbors to collect trash from the stream in Glendale.

In Radebaugh Park, the students cleaned out trash from the stream and then helped neighbors chop out a wall of invasive ivy from their alley.

A Towson University student loading up a pickup truck with invasive ivy.

In Wiltondale, volunteers picked up trash, and pulled out lots of invasive garlic mustard from the banks surrounding the Herring Run stream.

Wiltondale crew.
Neighbors who helped cleanup Overlook Park.
Volunteers at Loch Raven Library.

In Knollwood as part of a  two-day cleanup of the stream in the proposed Six Bridge Trail project, volunteers worked through a downpour, and some of them wore waders so they could clean the stream completely. Items pulled out of the stream included pipes, wood, and grocery carts.

The team wearing waders in order to thoroughly clean trash out of the stream in Knollwood.

In all, Green Towson Alliance organized twelve stream clean-ups in March and April. Over the past six years, stream cleanups organized by the Green Towson Alliance have removed more than 17 tons of trash from tributaries of the Herring Run.