Employee Spotlight – Taking care of our environment
EARTH DAY 2026
River Guardians Ohio – Protecting Our Waterways for Future Generations
As we celebrate Earth Day, we thought we would give you an update on our very own environmentalist, TOI’s COO/COS, James Carnahan. If you’ve been a reader of our newsletter for very long, you may remember a story we ran on him back in 2024. For those of you that are new to our newsletter or don’t recall the article, here is a little background.
The Oil Spill
Over the past 10 +years, James also known as “Opa”, has participated in a variety of annual cleanups around Summit Lake and the adjoining towpath near his home. As much as he loved the clean ups and seeing how awesome the waterways looked afterwards, he was discouraged after the first rainfall and all the trash returned. For years he kept searching for ways to prevent the trash from getting so heavy in the first place, but no answers came. That was until, July 6, 2023 when the universe was about to show him.
Early that morning, on his way to his favorite fishing hole located on the Tuscarawas River at the Wolf Creek Trailhead in Barberton, Ohio, he discovered and reported on a 1000-gallon oil spill. As he stepped into the water, oil began to cover his fishing rod and him. As he stood in the oil covered water, he looked around to find geese, ducks, muskrat and other wildlife, covered in the oil or dead. He was devastated. After calling officials, and with a fantastic team behind him here in the office, James was able to head out every day during the clean-up to watch and report on the progress on Facebook page @oparuns . He soon became the “Voice of the River”.
River Guardians Ohio
As he watched the crew clean up the oil, an idea started to form. Crews stopped the oil from continuing to spread with the use of floating barriers called a ‘containment boom’. “Why couldn’t that be done with trash?” He researched and found commercial “trash booms” too expensive. That’s when he got an idea, to create a breakaway trash boom at a much lower cost and River Guardians Ohio was born.
That winter, he and a friend worked on creating and testing River Guardians Ohio’s first prototype of a breakaway trash boom. It was approved by ODNR and the first booms were deployment in the spring of 2024 at Mud Run Creek and Summit Lake near his home with great success. During that first month RGO volunteers collected and bagged over 1,000 pounds of trash. Opa’s vision of mitigating the trash from getting into the waterways all year round was born.
<<<< Trash Boom Collecting Trash
In 2025, with ten breakaway trash booms installed in area waterways over 10,000 pounds of trash was collected. Each boom’s location is tracked, monitored and scooped up by volunteers. The trash bags are then picked up by different entities that RGO has developed relationships with such as Summit Metroparks and the City of Akron.
As for the Annual Cleanups, last years reports from a variety of entities that conduct those annual trash clean-ups have reported that they have collected less trash, sometimes less than half from a previous year, confirming that the trash booms are working.
Trash Boom After Clean Up >>>>
Today, along with mitigating trash with their trash booms RGO works on special projects that help reclaim and restore local watersheds, continually watch for any kind of pollution or abuse of the waterways, correcting and or reporting, as applicable.
They also focus on education (especially our youth) through special events, speaking and displays.
If you would like to learn more about River Guardian’s Ohio and all the work they are doing visit their website and blog at: Riverguardiansohio.com
A heron thanking RGO for a clean river.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about one of our own and enjoy a wonderful Earth Day!
Your Total Office Inc
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