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Keep it Clean
July 2, 2025
By: Erin Parker, Interpretive Services Supervisor
It’s a beautiful time of year to gather in your Metroparks for all kinds of summer outdoor recreation. From family picnics to swimming to golf, there’s something for everyone. We all want to enjoy clean green spaces, beautiful waterways, and healthy wildlife while we’re out spending quality time in the parks. The best way to have all of those things is to make sure we’re taking care of our litter and recycling properly while we’re here.
Keep It Clean
The Metroparks has launched a Keep It Clean initiative to help make it easier, but it only works if we all do our part. Trash is a problem that impacts every visitor as well as the wildlife that depends on the parks for food, water, shelter, and rearing their young.
In the Metroparks, trash is anything that can’t be recycled. Think: items that held greasy food (such as pizza boxes and fast-food wrappers), packaging made up of mixed materials (such as potato chip bags that are a mix of plastic and aluminum that isn’t easy to separate), clothing and textiles, and unfinished food/beverages. Some of those items can be recycled or composted outside of the parks, and visitors are always encouraged to pack out what they pack in whenever possible.
Recycling only works when it isn’t contaminated by non-recyclable items, food, and other trash. Recycling bins are labeled with the types of things that are accepted, and luckily, it’s a wide variety. Everything from glass, plastic, and aluminum bottles and cans to clean and dry paper and cardboard. If you ever wonder if an item belongs in the recycling bins or a trash can, check the label!
Helping Wildlife
In order to keep wildlife safe, it’s really important that all trash and recycling end up in the proper container. Nobody wants a family of skunks hanging out at their next picnic, and leaving food and food containers around teaches animals to associate the picnic areas- and people- with food. Most of our human food and drinks aren’t great for animals, who should be eating plants and animals that they can find on their own. Food containers and wrappers can also cause animals to get caught, trapped, or entangled and cause serious harm. By ensuring that all trash and recycling ends up in the proper container at the end of events, we reduce the ability of animals to get into anything they should and helps keep wildlife wild!
In areas where fishing is allowed, making sure all fishing line is removed when your fishing adventures end can prevent birds and other animals from getting tangled in the lines. Most fishing sites have convenient PVC pipe containers for collecting used or tangled line. This gets sorted into monofilament (recyclable) and everything else (not usually recyclable) and keeps it from harming animals. Fishing line left dangling from trees and other objects can entrap birds, turtles, and other animals leading to serious injuries and even death.
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