Thanks to all who participated in this year’s cleanup!
The 2023 Source to Sea Cleanup has now concluded. Thank you so much to the 130+ groups who participated! Your dedication to keeping our rivers clean is making a huge positive impact. You are welcome to see some of our early highlights and be on the lookout for the new Cleanup Chronicle which will provide many more stories, photos, and trash stats. We’ll be back with the 28th annual cleanup in 2024.
Welcome to the Source to Sea Cleanup, a powerful and effective community event spanning the length of our 410-mile watershed in NH, VT, MA, & CT. Each fall, thousands of volunteers of all ages and abilities come together to do their part and spend a few hours making the water cleaner, the river banks safer, and the wildlife happier.
How To Get Involved
Year-Round Cleanups
Although our annual event runs each fall, we encourage folks to consider cleaning up rivers, streams, parks, and city streats at other times of year, such as hosting an Earth Day Cleanup in spring, when foliage is still low and poison ivy at bay!
Cautions to spring cleanups: cold, high, and fast-moving water
Fall Cleanups
Lead a Group
Group Leaders organize the details of their own group(s) throughout the watershed. Start planning your group here.
Join a Group
If you’re most excited about cleaning, but less interested in organizing, you can join us as a Group Volunteer:
- Sign up with a group you know or find a group accepting volunteers
- Clean up!
- Tally the trash you collect to help CRC keep track of what’s out there. We use this data to advocate for pollution solutions.
Go out on your own
You may register as a Solo Volunteer! This helps us know that you’re out there & where you’re planning to clean. After your Cleanup, please share your Trash Tally with us.
Other Ways to Support
- Be a Trash Scout or a #RiverWitness — Help our team identify cleanup sites by adding them to our map or documenting problem areas
- Volunteer to help pack and/or deliver supplies to local groups — Email us to get involved
- Incorporate Source to Sea Cleanup in your curriculum – If you’re an educator, you can connect your students to the Cleanup by registering a group and/or incorporating these themes into your curriculum.
- Become a Sponsor
2023 Accomplishments:
Thank you to all of our volunteers, group leaders, sponsors, and friends, for working together to tackle the trash challenge throughout the Connecticut River watershed. A sample of this year’s stats:
- Over 1200 volunteers fanned out in all four river states. What a team effort!
- 132 registered Cleanup groups (plus dozens of others who went out on their own)
- 34.2 tons of trash diverted from rivers & streams
- 9,241 beverage containers – comprised of plastic, glass, and aluminum cans
- 13,781 pounds of scrap metal
See the full impact of our collective efforts in the 2023 Source to Sea Chronicle.
Sign up for our Source to Sea Cleanup eNews to get the details right to your inbox.
We look forward to seeing this fall at Cleanup 2024!
For more information about the Cleanup, contact Stacey Lennard, Cleanup Coordinator, at cleanup@ctriver.org or 413-772-2020 x211.
Thanks for helping to keep our rivers clean!
CRC’s Source to Sea Cleanup has teamed up with Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup and American Rivers National River Cleanup, for cleaner waterways around the U.S. and the world.