Meet the teenager bringing Tecumseh together to pick up trash
Maude Drake, 17, is a student at St. Anne Catholic High School
It's time for spring cleaning and Earth Day is right around the corner on April 22.
A southwestern Ontario town is getting set to mark the occasion in a new way.
For the first time, Tecumseh is seeing a community-wide cleanup that will involve volunteers fanning out with garbage bags this weekend. On Saturday, they'll be along Tecumseh Road and Manning Road collecting litter in hopes of making the town look a little cleaner.
The Optimist Club of St. Clair Beach, the Rotary Club of Windsor Roseland and the Tecumseh Business Improvement Association (BIA) are teaming up — thanks to a local teenager.
LISTEN | Teenager organizes town-wide spring cleanup in Tecumseh
Maude Drake, 17, pitched the project the idea and has been a driving force in bringing it to life.
Drake spoke with CBC Radio's Windsor Morning host Amy Dodge about her brainchild. Here's a portion of that conversation.
What inspired you to come up with this idea for Earth?
Ever since I was young, I've always been very passionate about the environment and protecting it. I would look up on YouTube little ways to become zero waste and urge my friends to never litter. It would always make me so mad.
I put together a proposal for a town cleanup to see if they were interested and luckily both clubs decided to come together for this project.
How did it feel to pitch your idea in front of all those adults?
It was nerve-wracking.
I made a presentation and worked on it for a long time to make sure everything was perfect and I was just eager to promote a town clean up because I think it's important that we have pride in our community and that we take care of the earth that's ours. There's only one, and that's often overlooked, I feel.
WATCH | Maude Drake shares why she the environment is important to her:
What kind of reaction did you get from people after your presentation?
It was a very good reaction.
They honestly were all excited to bring it to life.
I think especially after winter when all of the snow melts, people really start to realize the amount of litter around the town.
What will the cleanup look like on Saturday?
On Saturday, April 19 at 10 a.m., we're meeting at the garden centre at Zehrs on Manning Road and volunteers will be given garbage bags and things to pick up litter — and they'll be assigned zones. Hopefully by noon we'll have Tecumseh looking a lot cleaner.
Why does this kind of community cleanup matter to you personally?
I've always just loved the environment and those documentaries about … planet Earth have always interested me so much.
I find that environmental issues are overlooked, especially when talking about politics that I hear my parents or older people talking about.
It's the younger generations like me that are going to be the most affected by these issues. I think it's important that we make environmental protection something that we instill in our community now so that it's longer lasting and it becomes the new norm.
Instead of … all of these plastic wrappers and bags that people bring to stores … bring your reusable bags and protect the environment. If we ruin this earth, we don't have anywhere else to go.
Is there anything else that you look at in our daily life that you think you'd like to change for your generation?
Yeah, I think especially after COVID — once that happened — the idea of reducing waste kind of became something that people didn't think about anymore. All of the PPE, we were really pushing to protect ourselves and it made us forget about the environment around us.
I think even switching to metal water bottles or reusable bags at stores, just small changes will really help. Proper recycling too.
I urge people around the community, even if you can't come out on Saturday to pick up litter when you go on a walk or if you're on the side of the road and you see something, because then we won't even need a town cleanup.
Do you see this becoming an annual event in to come?
I really hope so, especially with the support of both the optimist club and the rotary and the Tecumseh BIA. Having all of these together makes it a bigger thing to promote.
I want to bring in Windsor. So maybe next year bring in Windsor-Essex or Chatham so we can clean up Windsor and Essex County as a whole.
What do you hope people take away from participating?
I hope people just remember that this earth is just ours and it's the only place we have to live. I think it's important to take care of our home and make sure that we bring the cleanup back into our lives.
With files from Windsor Morning. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity