BLOG: Get Ready for Earth Day With These River Cleanup Tips

by Katina Hazimhalis, Budget Dumpster

Nearly every community has a nearby waterway, whether a river, lake, bay or creek. Unfortunately, these areas tend to be litter magnets. In fact, nearly 40% of U.S. rivers have been declared too polluted for swimming, fishing or other recreational activities.

Individual people are responsible for creating the trash that clogs our waterways, and it’s often up to individual people to clean that trash up. By hosting a river cleanup project in your area, you can improve the health of your local waterway while also improving community morale – and maybe even inspiring other cleanup projects.

Answer These 4 Questions to Plan a River Cleanup Event

Hosting a successful river cleanup project requires as much planning as elbow grease. Here are the questions you’ll need to answer to get your project off the ground:

1. Where will the cleanup take place?

The first step in planning a river cleanup project is choosing a location. While this may seem straightforward, there are several factors to evaluate before making a final call:

• What’s the state of your waterway? You’ll want to scout out the trashiest location in order to make the biggest impact.
• What’s the accessibility? You need a location with multiple access points so that all volunteers are able to participate. Your cleanup location should not be near dangerous rapids or extremely deep water.
• What’s the water level? In most areas, late spring and fall are the best times for a river cleanup since water levels will be lower, leaving more litter within easy each.

2. How will we find volunteers?

A river cleanup makes a great volunteer activity for scout troops, civic organizations or clubs of any kind. But if you don’t have an established group of volunteers, you’ll have to decide how to get the word out. The first step is to create listings for the event on volunteer meetup sites and/or Facebook. But there are plenty of other methods you can use, like utilizing Facebook ads, alerting local media outlets or approaching local environmental groups.

3. Will we need permits?

If your river cleanup will take place entirely on public property, such as within a park, then no permit is needed. However, if your cleanup will cross over onto private or city-owned property, you’ll need to track down the owners and get their written permission before the cleanup. While this can take time and effort, it’s extremely important to do your due diligence when it comes to gaining permission.

4. What will we do with the trash?

Once the cleanup is complete, you’ll want to make sure that all the trash you collected ends up in the right place. Find out what kind of recycling services are available in your area and, if possible, make a plan to separate recyclables from the rest of the trash. For the remaining debris, you’ll need to find out whether the city will provide trash collection for your river cleanup. If not, you’ll need to either rent a dumpster or find a volunteer with a pickup truck to haul the trash to the landfill.

Here’s to healthier rivers!

Katina Hazimihalis is a content writer for Budget Dumpster. Reach her at katinah@budgetdumpster.com. This post was adapted from Budget Dumpster’s River Cleanup Guide. Check out the full guide for in-depth, start-to-finish advice on planning a river cleanup event, covering everything from advertising your cleanup to securing the necessary permits.

BLOG: The Holy River

by Sara Brock, The Groundwater Foundation

My friend and guide,
Praveen, in Pashupatinath

Nepal is a very spiritual country.  As I walked the cold, crowded streets in January, I saw little shrines dotting the streets, often smeared with a dye made of semi-crushed flower petals in bright red and yellow hues. Larger Hindu temples, the ones the massive 2015 earthquake missed, stood tall and ornate. Among the grandest of these temples, and certainly the most important temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, is Pashupatinath (Pa-shoo-pa-tea-not), located on the banks of the holy Bagmati River in the Kathmandu Valley.

Shiva is the Hindu Supreme Being of creation, destruction, and transformation. Believers come to Pashupatinath to pray and help their deceased relatives achieve nirvana by cremating the bodies in a special ritual beside the river. Once the ritual is complete, the ashes are brushed into the Bagmati River which is believed to have the power to purify, ensuring that the spirit is fully released from the body.  

These rituals are performed every day of the year from sun up to sun down. Families bring their dead from thousands of miles away, some even from India, to take part in this special ritual. The air is thick with ash and oil. My friends and I sat and sneezed out black mucus, watching as more and more ashes were pushed into the river. On top of this, the water continues to flow slowly through the city, used upstream and downstream for drinking, bathing, irrigation, and dumping trash and untreated sewage¹.

Women basket-fishing from the river.

It seems counterintuitive to use a holy river with little regard to environmental or health concerns and indeed; Nepali citizens are starting to recognize and react to the hazards of indiscriminant disposal. However, for centuries, the river had provided clean, accessible water to the dry and mountainous region. The Kathmandu Valley was a resource hub and quickly drew a large population along the Bagmati’s banks. Hindus and Buddhists alike worshipped the river, sourced from a trinity of headwaters from the Himalaya and Green Mountain Ranges to the north and seasonal monsoons. 

In the 70s, a huge spike in urbanization driven by economic opportunity caused Kathmandu to quickly develop the infrastructure necessary to support the population surge². Unfortunately, the city skipped over many steps that have since negatively affected public and environmental health, like sanitary disposal of human and industrial waste. With more and more people to provide resources for, the government focused on source augmentation rather than sewage transportation and treatment systems. However, thanks to increased education and cooperation from world health and environmental organizations, many point source polluters have since been shut down and the Bagmati has gotten a second chance³.

Nepali people may have prioritized their personal and spiritual water needs over the long-term conservation of the Bagmati, but they have never ignored its importance. On Saturdays, the national holy day of rest, a group of about 100 Kathmandu residents gather to pick up and properly dispose of the trash on the riverbank. As it gets progressively cleaner, locals appreciate the symbolic river and take more care to dump their trash in a designated area⁴. The river moves a little more swiftly and is transforming the countryside after the destructive aftermath of the earthquake. So while Pashupatinath continues to cremate the honorable dead and the valley reconstructs, Nepal now has the momentum and hope to restore purity to its holy river.

The earthquake shelters are now shrines of the country's
national pride, love for each other, and restored faith.

Sources
1. Keane, Katrina. “Suitably Modern.” KATRINA KEANE, 13 Apr. 2013, katrinakeane.com/abstract/.
2. Platman, Lauren, "From Holy to Holistic: Working Towards Integrated Management of the Bagmati River Corridor" (2014). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. Paper 1808
3. Bhaduri, Amita. “Living Rivers, Dying Rivers: Bagmati River in Nepal.” India Water Portal, Arghyam Initiative, 1 May 2012, www.indiawaterportal.org/articles/living-rivers-dying-rivers-bagmati-river-nepal.
4. Jenkins, Clare. “Bagmati River Story.” Kathmandu Post, Ekantipur, 24 June 2016, kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/printedition/news/2016-06-24/bagmati-river-story.html.