On Saturday morning, April 29, the Esplanade Association, the 100-percent privately funded friends group for the Charles River Esplanade, had over 400 volunteers participate in the 18th annual Earth Day Charles River Cleanup.
Since 2000, the Esplanade Association has partnered with the Charles River Watershed Association (CRWA), one of the country’s oldest watershed organizations and the lead organizer of the cleanup, to coordinate the event at the Esplanade. The cleanup involves volunteers picking up trash at over 100 different sites along the Charles River and its tributaries.
The Esplanade Association and its dedicated volunteers worked along the Charles River Esplanade from the Museum of Science to the B.U. Bridge to remove trash and debris from the park. The work was completed both along the shoreline and throughout the parkland to get this beautiful urban oasis ready for spring. This year, volunteers with the Esplanade Association removed 210 bags of trash from the park, making the Charles River cleaner, healthier and more beautiful.
Volunteers participated as part of more than 100 different neighborhood, school, religious and corporate groups, as well as individually. The Charles River Cleanup is the largest single-day river cleanup in the country – inviting over 3,000 volunteers to come together and clean the park ands surrounding the Charles River.
The Annual Earth Day Charles River Cleanup builds on a national effort as part of American Rivers’ National River Cleanup, which to date, has removed over 20.7 million pounds of trash from America’s waterways.