The key is beginning a love affair with what’s in your own backyard!

Rivers for Change’s Community Conservation and Stewardship Program (CCSP) involves hands on community engagement within the local watershed. These may include paddle days, river cleanups, restoration days, data collection, and events with local non-profits! Be sure to check our  Events page.

Cleanups

We love cleanups! Since 2013 we have worked every year with the Watershed Project for International Coastal Cleanup Day to help reach areas only accessible by boat.

Rivers for change cleanup
Let's do this bucket
tons of litter collected from the river
RFC Cleanup photo
cleaning up tons of river trash
Big cleanup on the river
cleaning up trash
cleanup with a giant paddleboard

We integrate Cleanups on all of our Source to Sea adventures and within our Source to Sea School educational adventure program.

Our Board of Directors regularly join together for ongoing trash cleanups as well, it’s our little way of saying thanks and looking after the waterways we love.

cleaning up the river with the crew
Sac River Cleanup
masks on the river in covid times

Plogging and Pladdling

Have you joined the plogging trend during a pandemic yet? How about pladdling? Both involve picking up litter while jogging or paddling or maybe pliking? (Picking up litter while hiking?)

It’s a great activity to do solo or in a small socially distanced and masked pod.

you never know what you will find on the river
Cleaning up trash on the river
a mountain of trash pulled from the river
cleanup on the sacramento river
bottles and bottles of trash
photographing trash on the river
Microplastics
Collecting trash on the river

Join Us!

Check out our Upcoming Events page regularly to see if there’s a cleanup to get involved with.

Organize a cleanup of your own, this can involve anything from grabbing your favorite pup to join you, to extending it to family, friends, or your wider neighborhood!

It is a wonderful way to give back to your local community and the places that you love to play in. We recommend using the Litterati app, in order to help track what you collect.

Tracking data and especially specific brands helps to send a message to producers and move legislation like EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) forward to help companies become more responsible for the waste that they produce. It also puts pressure on legislation to help ban single-use plastic within a community.

Take Action!

  1. Stop using single-use items. Use reusables instead!
  2. If you see trash, pick it up and log it in an App like Litterati.
  3. Share your photos on social media and tag brands.
  4. Spread knowledge about reducing waste, using reusables, and get educated on what is and isn’t recyclable. It can be tricky and varies from community to community. It’s important to be aware of local composting and the difference between new plant-based eco-friendly packaging which actually may not fit into the current waste management systems. So when in doubt landfill it! 🙁
  5. Become a clean-up community ambassador for Rivers for Change! RFC regularly holds cleanups and we’re always looking for more people eager to bring a group together for a cleanup. Whether you’re taking your family out for a paddle or want to grab a group of friends, a local school, or put something out to the wider community-we’d love for you to get involved.
top 10 trash items collected