Community Volunteers To Spruce Up Silver Lake Park

The Silver Lake Nature Center plays host to a cleanup effort on the first Saturday of every month, and this month was no different.

Volunteers, ranging in numbers from dozen up to 50 on cleanup days come out to spur up the park and make the park  a better place for everyone.

The October cleanup is a little different from most of the year’s efforts. Instead of a standard cleanup, the waterways around the park property are cleaned up. Volunteers get into canoes and kayaks and collect waste from the lake. Volunteers bag up the waste, while others take the waste for disposal.

The cleanups are made possible a sponsorship from Dow, which provides materials and equipment.

“We will go through 200 garbage bags at a minimum,” said Jerry Kozlansky, the naturalist and director of the Silver Lake Nature Center.

The center relies on volunteers for much of the work that needs to get done at the center, including cleanup days like those that grace the beginning of each month.

Dow’s sponsorship of the cleanup program is part of the company’s overarching global sustainability goals. Set in 10 year increments, the goal for 2025 is to positively impact one billion people with volunteer and environmental work.

“The whole idea is that we need to be the cvhange we want to see in our community,” said Leo Otting, the community and leadership volunteer manager at Dow. Although Otting lives in West Philadelphia, he takes the opportunity to come out and volunteer at Silver Lake Park, which sits in Bristol Borough and Bristol Township, because he likes to work with the watersheds.

Silver Lake Park exists as a place for the public to come and enjoy the wildlife, Kozlanksy explained.

“Anything you want to do, we can find something in that vein for you to do.”