After 2 education programs, a trash scout, and camping through 4 storms, we were very heartbroken to cancel the cleanup and festival. We would like to thank our sponsors, partners, crew, and friends from the Washington Area River Council for the hard work and support to make these large-scale events happen. We greatly appreciate all the exhibitors, musicians, and artists who stayed on-call until the very end! Additionally, we'd love to thank individuals from the City of Washington who were there to help with the cleanup, especially helping with emergency response.

We are headed to the Confluence of two great rivers--the Missouri and Mississippi River! We haven't been back since 2018, 4 years! Boy does time fly, but MRR is excited to clean up St. Louis's reach of the Missouri River! Please join us September 17th for a day of stewardship.

With a beautiful view of Missouri's capitol building, Missouri River Relief will be hosting a cleanup on Jefferson City's reach of the river! Make sure to register to join us at the great Noren Access on October 15th.

Our hearts and dumpsters are full after such an amazing week in Sugar Creek, MO at LaBenite Park. With the support of the entire community and the help of over 200 volunteers, we were able to make a huge impact on such a great stretch of river downstream of Kansas City. Unfortunately, this stretch of river is no stranger to mounds of trash and single use plastic washing down from the streams draining the metropolitan area just upstream, but with the help of 186 volunteers we were able to remove a staggering 247 large bags of trash from 10 miles of river, totaling an estimated 5.1 tons of trash.

What a huge success in Kansas City. This was our first time back to the area since 2018, and we were itching to get back to our large-scale cleanups and see our Kansas City friends. The heat—and some rain—couldn’t stop our crew and volunteers from coming out to clean up the Big Muddy with us. We had a total of 166 volunteers came out to clean up along nearly 10 miles of river along Kansas City out of Riverfront Park. In just one day, we picked up and removed 6 tons of trash, including over 2 tons of tires that were dumped under the I-435 bridge. Our hardcore volunteer crew members arrived Wednesday to help set up camp, host a Sunset Cruise with sponsors on Thursday, scout the river on Friday, and then execute our cleanup on Saturday. Thank you so much!

This was our first official Flat Branch Cleanup sparked by Laura Semken's cleanup last year. Flat Branch Creek was the origin of the settlement of Columbia, Missouri because of its ideal low water banks. The beautiful creek is the reason we are all here today! Today, it drains a large part of central Columbia. We had 25 mighty volunteers wading through water, digging plastic bags out of roots and clearing trashy log jams along a 1.5 mile stretch of Flat Branch Creek.

Working with members of the river communities that we visited, a total of 11 cleanups were organized throughout the project. 343 volunteers managed to pull out 847 bags of trash, along with 382 tires of various sizes! The tonnage for the whole Big Muddy Clean Sweep project ended up totaling 23.6 TONS of trash!

Missouri River Relief is officially returning to the Omaha/Council Bluffs area to host a series of on-the-water Missouri River cleanups, engaging families and civic groups in stewardship along the banks. This series of cleanups will take place on May 21 - 23, 2021 on the Missouri River along the Omaha and Council Bluffs stretch.

Being able to do a clean-up on our home stretch of river brings us so much joy. Through sun, wind, rain, and cold, 99 dedicated volunteers and crew cleaned up along a 14 mile stretch of river near Cooper’s Landing over the course of 3 days, removing 5.5 tons of trash including 56 tires. Each day brought new trash treasures, tires and boatloads of bags to be sorted for recycling. Our volunteer crew spent 5 chilly days with us as we set up camp, scouted the river for trash, cleaned the river, and picked up camp at the end.

This was Missouri River Relief’s first clean-up with volunteers since the pandemic started and things certainly looked a bit different. Historically, our clean-ups in the St. Louis area draw more than 200 volunteers, all eager to hop onto boats and clean the banks of this beautiful river. Instead, over the course of 3 days, 53 volunteers collected over 166 bags of trash, 58 tires and 1.4 tons of scrap metal, totaling 5.4 TONS of trash removed from the river.