PEABODY — After learning more about Earth Day in school, 7-year-old Regina Luongo took it upon herself to pick up trash at the area around Crystal Lake, where she has walked around with her family since she was a little girl.
“We like to go hang out and feed ducks and just walk around the trails,” Angela Luongo, Regina’s mom, said.
Angela and Regina’s uncle, Robbie Petrelis, bought her a trash picker to help Regina and accompanied her.
According to Angela, Regina told her that her eagerness to do a cleanup around the lake was inspired not just by her school teaching her about Earth Day, but also by seeing that a place she loves so much had so much trash.
“Regina said, ‘Mommy, we always walk around and we always see all this trash and people polluting,’” Angela said. “She says it’s not good for the earth.”
Angela said that they collected four bags of trash in just a little more than an hour, and found things like coffee cups, fishing lines, alcohol bottles, a muffin pan, makeup containers, and bags for dog waste.
“You can tell that some of the areas were from teenagers who just didn’t care and they left their trash,” Angela said, recalling seeing a fire pit in the middle of the woods that had s’mores boxes and firewood logs left behind. “More people should do this to help, and she understood that.”
Angela said that Regina wants to do it again because the paths at Crystal Lake are long, and they were only able to clean a small portion of the area.
“It was great for a little kid to want to do something other than just hanging out with their friends and, you know, going places on vacation,” Angela said. “I thought it was a really nice thing for a little kid to want to learn.”
Crystal Lake means a lot to Angela, who was born and raised in Peabody, as she and her family would spend time there when she was young as well. Angela also credited Petrelis, her brother, with teaching Regina more about caring for the environment.
“My brother’s very into nature,” Angela said. “He’s always hiking and he’s always trying to teach her to make sure she does the right thing. And we don’t want her to be, when she gets older, to be a kid who just throws the trash on the ground and doesn’t appreciate the environment.”
