CH scouts clean up PEACE Park

Scouts from Pack 11 and Troop 620 helped clean up Coventry PEACE Park in May. Pictured are scouts Sabina, Yale, Max, Oliver, Arlo, Louis, Claire, Ellie, Tess, Sue, and Anna, along with their volunteer leaders. [photo: Mike Evano]

May 6 was “Trash the Trash” day for the global scouting community, charging scouts worldwide to clean up their communities. Thousands of scouts participated, from Germany, Kenya, India . . . and Cleveland Heights!

More than a dozen scouts and their leaders gathered at Coventry PEACE Park to do their part in the effort. Boys and girls from local Cub Scout Pack 11 and Scouts BSA Troop 620G received a quick briefing from Coventry Village Library Branch Manager Maggie Kinney, before arming themselves with gloves and trash bags for the cleanup. The diligent group of scouts worked for more than an hour, picking up trash in the main playground area and the green spaces around it. Trash of all shapes and sizes was recovered and disposed of properly, with the team recovering nearly 20 bags of trash. The total collection just fit inside a 55-gallon trash container.

“It’s important that our community’s park is looking its best,” said Kinney. “I hope that when people see groups like these scouts out there keeping the park clean, they will do their part to do the same by simply throwing away their trash in the cans we provide. It’s a small thing that can make a big difference!”

While the clean-up effort was important work, the scouts had fun doing it.

“Come help,” shouted one scout late in the effort, “I found a landfill!” On hands and knees, four scouts got to work excavating cans and paper trash from underneath a playground platform, laughing the whole time.

“I’m glad we could help clean up,” said another participant. “We come here to play all the time and want it to be a clean and safe place, for us and for others.”

“Trash the Trash Day” is an international Messengers of Peace project for scouts, in which each scout is challenged to bring a friend or family member along and pick up at least one kilo (2.2 pounds) of trash each on the first Saturday in May. Locally, it is one of two communitywide service projects in which scouts in the Lake Erie Council, Boy Scouts of America participate; the other, Scouting for Food, is a national food drive held in August.

For more information about scouting in the area, visit www.lecbsa.org or call 216-861-6060.