Enviro Group Brings Ad Campaign to Obituaries

Environmental groups often send mailers, hold fundraisers, and organize protests to raise awareness for a cause. But a Minnesota group tried a more unusual approach. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:

Transcript

Environmental groups often send mailers, hold fundraisers, and
organize protests to raise awareness for a cause. But a Minnesota group
tried a more unusual approach. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports.


Near the obituary section of the St. Paul newspaper, readers recently came
across this. Lake Patricia, age 12,830, dies after a grueling battle with
contaminated run-off. The ad in the form of a death announcement is part of
a fall campaign from the group Metro Watershed Partners. They’re hoping to
get people to rake their leaves. Ron Struss is with the University of
Minnesota extension service, and took part in the campaign. He says leaves
contain phosphorus, which causes harmful algae blooms if leaves wash into
lakes and streams. Struss says the obit hit home in the land of 10,000
lakes.


“Lakes are very dear to people in the state, and folks that have a
life-long association, and even through generations, loss of water quality
in a lake is taken as a loss of something that’s personal to them that’s
gone.”


Struss says the campaign has been successful. He says more people are
raking their leaves and telling their neighbors about the run-off problem.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Christina Shockley.