Project Clean Stream 2016 Results Show Best Year Ever!

Largest number of volunteers and biggest Chesapeake impact since 2002 launch[one_half ] Project Clean Stream volunteers hold bags of trash collected at cleanup event. Download the full press release (.pdf)

Annapolis, MD (June 10, 2016) The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay announced its Project Clean Stream results today. This year’s Project Clean Stream efforts rallied the largest annual spring cleanup to date, with 58,000 volunteers removing 3.3 million pounds of trash at over 3,000 sites across the Chesapeake Bay watershed from New York to Virginia.

Launched in 2002, Project Clean Stream brings people together every spring in this powerful, volunteer-driven program focused on building strong connections between residents and their local streams and rivers, and increasing commitment to environmental stewardship. In addition to cleanups, Project Clean Stream activities also include tree plantings, rain garden establishment, and invasive plant removal.Project Clean Stream has grown from its small beginning as a local cleanup in Baltimore County, to a Chesapeake Bay watershed-wide effort in all 6 Bay states and the District of Columbia. This year, the Alliance partnered with community organizations, schools and universities, businesses, and other local and regional environmental groups including the Alice Ferguson Foundation and Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful to bring volunteers to clean up streams, shorelines, roadsides, and parks in their local neighborhoods. Project Clean Stream 2016 sponsors include Chesapeake Bay Trust, Dominion Resources, MOMs Organic Market, and Perdue Farms. Many of these organizations hosted their own cleanup sites for their employees and their family and friends.

Alliance Executive Director Al Todd notes, “Project Clean Stream is a program that is deeply-rooted in the Alliance mission. Working with scores of partners, mobilizing thousands of local volunteers, and creating meaningful improvements of our local streams is what the Alliance is all about. We are delighted with the scope of the impact we have been able to have across the watershed this year and grateful for the support of the over 58,000 volunteers who came out to support Project Clean Stream this spring. Beyond the millions of pounds of trash and debris cleaned from our streams, we hope that this connection of people and nature will also produce a passion for environmental stewardship that lasts for years to come.” Executive Director, Al Todd, stands next to a pile of trash collected at a Project Clean Stream cleanup event.Joanna Freeman, the Alliance’s Project Clean Stream manager, added, “Project Clean Stream is an easy way for residents to get connected to their local stream by picking up trash before it makes its way downstream to the river and the Bay. Through this direct hands-on cleanup activity, Project Clean Stream helps to educate people, young and old, on the importance of environmental stewardship and builds lasting commitment to it. We find that once volunteers clean up a site, it stays clean as the community stays involved in the stewardship effort.”

Save the date next year to volunteer at the Project Clean Stream Earth Month kickoff on April 1, 2017.

Download the full press release (.pdf)