Getting Out of House to Clean Up North Shore

Two friends spend their time without a job picking up garbage along Brighton Beach all the way to Two Harbors.

DULUTH, Minn.- As more people are enjoying activities outdoors, two folks decided to show the environment some love, and pick up trash along the North Shore.

After losing their jobs at Duluth Woman’s Club, Lane Prekker and Karina Bite decided to get out of the house and head to Brighton Beach. “We came up here to get out in the fresh air and do some rock hunting for agates and such,” said Prekker.

Instead of rocks and agates, they discovered a lot of something else.

“We saw all the trash everywhere and we thought, well, we got all the time in the world,” he said.

So with trash bags, gloves, and hand sanitizer donated by the Duluth Woman’s Club, they started cleaning up. “It was disgusting, there was a lot of it,”Karina said.

They picked up normal trash, “cans and fast food garbage,” she described.

They also found some not-so-normal items.

“We thought the weirdest thing was gonna be a windshield, a car windshield,” said Bite.

“But then I walked down further, and I found a feed-bag full of three dead chickens,” she said. “And then there was one cooked chicken there as well. Don’t know the connection.”

On Tuesday, their first day out, they filled up seven bags in just a few hours. On Wednesday at the second site, five bags.

“Number One: we’re laid off, so we have a bunch of time,” said Lane. “Number Two: the snow is just melted and nothing is growing yet, so everything is exposed so you can easily find it.”

“And Number Three: just because we wanted to do something good, and like we were doing something, y’know?” he said.

The two hope that other people join them, or just start picking up garbage near wherever they live. “You can do this anywhere, you can do this in your neighborhood, you can pick spot, go further up the shore than we’re going,” Prekker said.

Lane and Karina plan to travel all the way up to Two Harbors picking up trash. You can call Duluth Woman’s Club at (218) 724-3168 to join them or help out.

Because even in a pandemic, the Lake needs to be taken care of just as much as we do.

“We don’t want that trash to get into our beautiful Lake Superior,” said Karina.

“Let’s make our lake beautiful again,” said Lane.