As part of an EPA funded litter-study, our Earth Day celebrations this year were all about trash—and visioning a trash-free watershed.
Most trash that enters waterways in urban areas is introduced by stormwater pipe networks. Rain washes trash items into storm drains, and underground pipe networks carry it directly to the river. So the first—and most practical—place to estimate quantities of trash in the river is on city streets themselves. In partnership with dedicated volunteers, we spent the month of April performing visual trash assessments throughout the watershed to determine: where are the most heavily-littered neighborhoods and major litter sources are located? And, what kind of trash is accumulating?
On Earth Day, April 21st, we set out with 50 volunteers to collect, categorize and remove trash from Torbert Macdonald Park in Medford. In just over an hour, we were able to collect almost 80 pounds of trash! Thanks to our dedicated volunteers, we counted and categorized half of this trash. We broke the trash into almost forty categories; first based on material (paper, glass, metal, plastic, and other), and then further into uses such as water bottles, food packaging, cigarettes, etc. Overall, our volunteers counted almost 2,000 discrete trash items. Below is a breakdown of some of the interesting finds.
The most abundant items:
463 small fragments (we asked volunteers to remove even small pieces of trash)
238 cigarettes
193 plastic bags
161 styrofoam food packaging items (mostly Dunkin and Seven Eleven)
128 plastic food wrappers
148 plastic beverage/water bottles
105 paper fragments
40 glass bottles
36 straws
35 bottle caps
34 cans
27 candy wrappers
Over 20 fast food paper items like cups and napkins - mostly from Dunkin
Unique items collected:
Parking ticket
Homework
Fake plant
Traffic cone and bricks
All of the data collected will be used to gain a better understanding of where river trash is coming from within the watershed, allowing us to develop location-specific plans to prevent future trash from entering the Mystic River.
Thank you for all that you are doing to keep the Mystic trash-free!
