Thank you to 213 volunteers who cleaned 14 sites over 7 miles in the creek on Saturday, August 21, 2021! What a fun day- more details, weird trash pics, and tonnage to come soon!
Did you volunteer with us at the Clean-Up? We want to hear about your experience! Please let us know how it went and how we could improve the volunteer experience by taking this short volunteer survey here.
Who helped:
Volunteers including families, kids, parents, grandparents, teachers, students, couples, volunteer groups, church groups, corporate teams, neighborhood groups, and Creek Captains as well as Creek Crew leaders who became Creek Captains for this event. 🙂
Teams included NOAA, All Saints Episcopal Church, The River Runners, Clackamas Rotary Club, Saint Mary Ethiopian Church, Friends of Tideman Johnson, and Friends of Errol Heights.
Project partners— including Portland Parks and Recreation who helped plan, lead and support Parks teams, North Clackamas Parks and Recreation who provided site support as well as trash hauling, the City of Gresham who hosted a site and helped recruit, SOLVE and American Rivers for providing clean-up supplies, Ground Score Association for doing pre-clean-up outreach to campers, Sunset and Hoodview for providing hauling and disposal, Rose CDC for providing interns Dima and Liana to help us do outreach for the event, and our bilingual nature interns Khan Tung and Helen Chen who teamed up to lead a site.
Funders— Clackamas Water Environment Services, Portland’s Bureau of Environmental Services, Advantis Credit Union, and the Mintkeski Family Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation.
What were the volunteer jobs:
Picking up litter (from the creek, or a park), Creek Captain leading the event, photographers, burrito receivers (who wait for burrito deliveries), trash brigade (hauling trash from where litter was piled), trash royalty (separating hazardous material and tires from what came back)
What were the outcomes?
The weird trash winner was voted on via social media, and was RANDOM DOLL HEAD. Close runners up were Santa and Nintendo. See the full details and pictures here.
TOTAL TRASH REMOVED: 6.4 TONS
We haven’t had this much trash since 2012! Which makes our new total AS OF 2021 — DRUMROLL PLEASE —
65 tons removed form the creek since we started this project in 2007. GO TEAM.
Other outcomes than just the trash we removed? Well it’s a beautiful day when 200+ volunteers get together to clean the creek, make friendships, and get a chance to experience the aquatic environment from…within! There’s no better way to make a difference while spotting wildlife, and getting acquainted with the personality of this very special urban creek. We are so humbled by our volunteers–thank you so much!!!
