Helping remove 11,384 pounds of trash from McKellar Lake in Memphis, Tennessee, is part of a day in the life of Illinois State University senior biochemistry major Faith Breausche.
She is among 37 participants in this week’s Living Lands & Waters (LL&W) Alternative Spring Break trip to clean up the 1,400-square-acre lake that feeds into the Mississippi River. Breausche is no stranger to this trip. In fact, this is the third time she’s participated.
“I chose to go on this trip three years ago because the progression of climate change and how that may affect future generations worried me, and still does,” said Breausche. “This trip was the perfect opportunity for me to be a part of something impactful, which is why this is my third year volunteering for this trip over spring break.”
On March 12, social media coordinator Elena Roth ’18, M.S. ’20, and senior social media coordinator Julie Mana-ay Perez followed along with Breausche through a day in her life on the LL&W Alternative Spring Break trip, coordinated by the Center for Civic Engagement.
Breausche starts the day by boarding a bus at 8:15 a.m. with the other Illinois State students to arrive at the marina by 9 a.m. where LL&W picks up groups for the day’s work. She grabs a life jacket, greets other students, and enjoys the “pump up” music blasting from the music boat. Before she climbs on board, the LL&W staff provide a safety overview and an update on how much trash the group picked up the previous day—13,590 pounds!
Breausche and her team head off to the first pickup location of the day. There are 37 participants in the group with students from Illinois State University, Carroll University, Northern Iowa University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. There are four boats, each with a LL&W group leader and students from every university.
LL&W uses jon boats to transport volunteers up and down the lake to different spots that need attention. They also use these boats to transport the trash from each location back to the trash barge on one side of the lake.
“The first two years I actually was on a different group leader’s boat, but this year I ended up going on Coach’s boat, which I was extremely excited about because he’s notorious for giving people nicknames,” said Breausche. “This is my third year and I’ve never gotten a nickname before. If you wanted to know, I’m ‘Lost and Found’ this year. Coach is great at motivating the groups and keeping the energy high. As for my team members, everyone on this trip and every year so far are some of the most passionate people that I have ever met in regards to environmentalism. It kind of picks you up and it reminds you that you’re not alone in these efforts. It’s not as intimidating or scary as it could be surrounded by other people who care.”
Breausche gets right to work picking up plastic bottles, lighters, clothes, and much more. Diving into the hard-to-reach places, Breausche tries not to think about what else is under the brush besides trash.
“When you get off the boat, you immediately hear the crunch of plastic under your feet, or glass, or Styrofoam, or pretty much any other form of waste,” said Breausche. “I tell myself that no one’s going to get that debris in the bushes or in the thick of the branches, and it’s just gonna stay there. So, I just pretend that ticks, poison ivy, and snakes don’t exist, and I just reach my hand in there hoping for the best. Nothing’s happened so far!”
Breausche often finds interesting things amongst the debris, like a discarded Mini Mouse doll. But her main goal this year was to find a specific item she’s been searching for since her first trip.
“I have worked so long for this,” said Breausche. “I finally found a rubber duck! Coach, our group leader, has a wall in the classroom of rubber ducks. I have wanted to get on that wall for so long, and this year, I actually found four rubber ducks—which was kind of crazy. I found a tie-dye rubber ducky and a cow rubber ducky. Other teams found parts of a mannequin, which I thought was crazy. We sometimes find mannequin heads, but this time was like the full body. I’m most proud of my rubber ducks though.”
At lunchtime, the group heads to the LL&W classroom barge that’s located on McKellar Lake. This barge contains two bathrooms, an office, a full galley kitchen, eight bedrooms, multiple closets, a full basement for storage and a 31,000 gallon water tank. The trash barge is docked next to the classroom barge, giving LL&W crew members and volunteers easy access to both.
LL&W crew members spend up to nine months a year living and traveling on the barge, hosting river cleanups, watershed conservation initiatives, workshops, tree plantings, and other key conservation efforts. Since LL&W was founded by Chad Pregracke in 1998, it has grown to be the only “industrial strength” river cleanup organization like it in the world.
After lunch on the classroom barge, the group crosses the gap to the trash barge to form a passing line to transport the bags of trash to one end of the barge where the bags are piled high.
Considering everything she’s collected, there’s one item Breausche would love to never see again.
“Styrofoam,” said Breausche. “I refuse to use Styrofoam. When you go to pick up a piece of Styrofoam, it will pretty much crumble in your hands into a thousand little pieces that are almost impossible to pick up. In my opinion, Styrofoam was probably the worst thing that you could ever use. Now, some things are unavoidable. There will come times where I need to use Styrofoam, but I try to limit my use of Styrofoam and increase my use of reusable products.”
After the trash has been piled high, it’s back on the boat to head to a new location to spend the afternoon cleaning up.
This year, because of lower water levels, the groups have reached places that are usually under water. This has sparked conversations amongst the LL&W crew members and the volunteers.
“I was talking with Coach about the lake because he said the water is probably eight to 10 feet lower than it was last year, which in my head is a pretty significant amount,” said Breausche. “And obviously there’s just variability in between the years, but I feel like eight to 10 Feet has a lot to do with water usage, climate change, and evaporation. It’s my goal for once I get home to learn more about what I can do to conserve water more.”
Looking forward, Breausche hopes to attend this trip at least two more times while she pursues a master’s degree in chemistry at Illinois State.
“This experience is always the most humbling, and that doesn’t change,” said Breausche. “Every year, you’re really humbled as to how much or how big this problem is, because it’s usually out of sight, out of mind. I always hope to take away new information that I can share with the people around me about how they can be more sustainable with what is available to them.”
Breausche is awed by the power of motivated people each day on this trip, especially when she hears the amount of trash they picked up the previous day.
“Crazy! It’s crazy that 37 people in one day could pick up 13,000 pounds,” said Breausche. “It gives me chills. And while I feel so great about it, it’s also sad knowing we had to pick up that much trash. But I hope it makes a little difference.”
Once everyone gets back to the hotel and cleans up from a day out on the lake, they gather for reflection. Reflection is a part of every Alternative Breaks trip and is a time for participants to reflect on their experiences and discuss larger sustainability issues.
The conference room the students usually meet in for reflection was locked, but that didn’t stop them from discussing the impact of their work and sustainability as a whole after a hard day’s work. The students kicked off reflection by talking about their biggest takeaways from the day.
Breausche shared with the group, “This is my third year on this trip, and it surprises me every year how bad it is. It’s crazy that we picked up 13,000 pounds yesterday and there’s still so much left. But our LL&W leader told us the trash used to extend almost 30 feet into the water and up to two feet high when you got onto the bank.”
For Breausche, that helped put the work they have completed into perspective and see how much progress she and LL&W have made.
After a long day out on the lake in which the group of 37 volunteers collected 11,384 pounds of trash, Breausche enjoys herself with other Illinois State students while out to dinner on Beale Street in Downtown Memphis.
For Breausche, this makes the experience of the trip even better. Not only is she picking up trash and helping the environment, she’s making friends while doing it.
“This trip is very fun,” said Breausche. “The Living Lands & Waters crew works really hard to make this a very engaging experience. It’s not monotone where you’re just going and picking up garbage, eating lunch, and then picking up more garbage. They throw in these little fun events, and have the music boat to keep you engaged, and then you get to work with the people around you. There are 21 of us from ISU on the trip, and you get to know everyone really well. I will always encourage other students to go on this trip.”
