“Shantee Creek is now home to the area’s first trash trap. The goal is to capture trash within five miles of Lake Erie.
The City of Toledo received nearly $415,000 in federal grant funding to install seven of them.
It’s a pretty simple concept: The litter that blows into the waterways get caught up by the traps in an attempt to clean up the areas waterways.
Ed Moore, Director of Public Utilities for the city of Toledo, says every year, roughly 2,500 tons of garbage travel through local waterways and out into Lake Erie.
The City of Toledo has teamed up with the Osprey Initiative to help clean up those waterways.
“You shouldn’t have to go see clean water on vacation once a year, it’s in your backyard,” said Don Bates, the owner and president of Osprey Initiative.
The city wants to remove trash from the water closer to the source of entry. Once it travels downstream and gets hit by the sun and breaks down, it’s almost impossible to get it out of the water by then.
“It is our connection to the environment. I think people realize there’s so much nature in their backyard and litter has been an impactful part of understanding that. And so removing this material in your local water, this is a blue-way,” said Bates.
This is a two-year project for the city, and with the traps obviously working 24/7, they’ll need some maintenance….”
View the whole story here: https://nbc24.com/news/local/toledo-installs-first-of-several-trash-traps-in-effort-to-clean-waterways