Peabody Girl Heeds Earth Day Call To Clean Up Around Crystal Lake

PEABODY, MA — A Peabody first-grader is doing her small part to make Peabody a cleaner place through her efforts to pick up trash on the walking trail around Crystal Lake.

Regina Luongo, a 7-year-old who attends West Memorial Elementary School, took some of the information she learned about Earth Day in school and turned it into a mission to collect the litter that she saw during a recent walk with her family at the lake.

"Every since Regina was a baby we have been taking to her Crystal Lake to walk the path and feed the ducks," Angela Luongo, Regina's mother, told Patch. "We visit very frequently and the last time we went she noticed that there was trash everywhere as we walked the paths and in the woods. Her uncle and I always taught her not to litter and not to grow up just tossing your trash on the ground."

Regina's mother said when she then went to school and learned about Earth Day she was inspired to do something to help the environment.

"She asked if we could go clean the trash up during our next visit to Crystal Lake," Angela Luongo said. "So her uncle, Robbie, purchased some of those trash picker sticks for us to go pick up trash."

Angela Luongo said in a little over an hour that Regina helped fill two large trash bags and two smaller bags of trash with everything from cans to bottles, to empty containers, dog poop bags, fishing lures and line, cardboard and even a muffin baking pan.

"She was very upset to see so much litter," Angela Luongo said. "She was really concerned over it hurting and killing the animals."

Her mother said Regina is hoping other children follow in her footsteps in cleaning up their favorite little corners of nature and that she intends to do the same when she goes back to Crystal Lake and other locations the family visits in Salem and Peabody.

"She was so proud to have accomplished so much and really recognized that she did something great for the environment," her mother said.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)