Volunteers posing for a photo just before being sent out to their trash site. Photo by Alyssa Thomas

Our volunteer crew and event staff headed out early Wednesday to set up our camp headquarters and prepare for our Big Muddy Sunset Cruise that evening. It was a fantastic evening with many of our sponsors and partners who help make all our efforts in the St. Louis area possible. Before heading out to watch the sunset on the Missouri River, our guests enjoyed appetizers provided by our dear friends from Bike Stop Café and refreshments from Good News Brewing. After the cruise, we enjoyed a BBQ dinner just by the riverside at the Lewis and Clark Boathouse.

St. Louis partners and sponsors ready to enjoy the sunset via boat. Photo by Alyssa Thomas

Thursday morning, 11 volunteers from Spire joined us for a cleanup day on the Missouri River out of the Pelican Island Access in the beautiful Sioux Passage Park. An upstream and downstream boat headed out to work on a couple sites in the morning. Boats returned to the ramp access for lunch, then headed right back out to cleanup another set of sites and haul all the trash we collected off the Missouri River. We managed to remove a TON of trash with the small but mighty group from Spire Serves! It is always a pleasure working with Spire, and a big thank you for supporting our efforts in the St. Louis area!

A handful of Spire Serves volunteers posing on the boat next to a load of trash. Photo by Kevin Tosie.

On Friday, we conducted a Trash Scout for the big cleanup out of the Lewis and Clark Boathouse! MRR crew headed out on the Missouri River to search a 10-mile reach of riverbank for sites to send the volunteers joining us the next day. When deemed a trashy and overall safe site for volunteers, the crew marks and notes the site for the dispatch team. With the complete overcast and light rain as we started out, the quest to find cleanup sites felt a lot more thrilling. The crew returned to report that there were plenty of trash sites.

MRR crew on a scout boat headed to the next potential cleanup site. Photo by Lynn DeCapo.

Our crew and staff set up early Saturday morning to prepare for the volunteers joining to remove trash from the banks of the Missouri River! Along with the 188 volunteers who joined in the efforts, boat operators from the Missouri Department of Conservation and our Mississippi River friends from Beasley Fish Co. helped ferry volunteer groups to their trash sites. Boat by boat, volunteers were taken out to their sites, then returned by the same operator for lunch in front of the Lewis and Clark Boathouse.

The park was filled with cheering and laughter during the MRR Trash Contest, where winners from each category win a prize for their best trash finds! We had many weird finds, which can be found at our trash tally below! Volunteers also had the opportunity to earn their Missouri River Explorer Badge and learn new ways they can reduce their single use plastic in their home and daily life through MRR’s Clean Rivers Start at Home.

After lunch and all the activities concluded, the MRR crew headed back out on the river to haul all the trash collected. We had our roll-off dumpster ready to be filled back at the Boathouse, with special thanks to Republic Services for donating all of the dumpsters at the program! Another big thank you goes out to the City of St. Charles Public Works for helping us haul the trash from each boat to the dumpster with a front end loader!

A total of 188 trash bags were collected, with total weight at nearly 4.79 TONS of trash. As the trash rolled in, our partners from Missouri River Bird Observatory audited a portion of the trash. This brand audit was conducted for a larger data set called Break Free From Plastics, where the results are used to identify the world’s top polluting corporations.

Thank you so much to all our volunteers, partners, and sponsors who made these efforts possible.

Check out our trash tally from both cleanups below!

MRBO director, Dana, cheesing with the pile of garbage volunteers are preparing to sort through for the audit! Photo by Melanie Cheney.

Pelican Island Access at Sioux Passage Park Trash Tally

57 bags of trash
2 tires with rim
1 Hubcap
Vehicle fuel tank
18 buckets/mineral tubs
Shop vac
Bowling ball
Unopened Folgers instant coffee
Couch cushion
Pool cover
Large chunk of Styrofoam
A piece of house siding
Sports balls
Plastic apple
NFL football-shaped ring
Toilet bowl brush
Old Gatorade bottle with $1 inside

Lewis and Clark Boathouse and Museum Trash Tally

188 Bags Trash
15 tires with rims
4 tires w/out rims
2 tractor trailer tires with rims
13 tractor trailer tires w/out rims
1 bike tire w/out rim
2 inner tubes
1 1,500-gallon plastic storage tank
1 railroad car spring
1 motorcycle frame piece
1 car bumper
1 car headlight
2 large Styrofoam chunks
2 1-gallon gas can
1 propane tank
1 5-gallon metal bucket
6 5-gallon plastic buckets
1 55-gallon metal barrel
3 55-gallon plastic barrels
2 20-gallon plastic tubs
17 1-gallon plastic plant containers (stacked)
1 Aldi’s tote bag
1 rubber trash bin
2 swinging trashcan lids
1 Dyson vacuum
1 air conditioner
2 grocery carts
1 barbeque grill
2 coolers
1 manual can opener
1 boat tow rope
8 rebar lengths
6 steel cable lengths
5 strips vinyl siding
1 window frame with glass
1 tarp
1 moving van blanket
1 dog blanket
1 rolling office chair base
1 folding camp chair
1 couch cushion
1 fishing rod
1 bobber
1 arrow shot into Styrofoam
1 shot gun cartridge with shells
3 lengths of rope
1 angle iron
1 ¾ inch joint slave
1 muffler pipe
9 railroad spikes
1 pair needle nose pliers (great shape)
2 chain saws
2 heavy duty industrial lights
2 traffic cones
1 cell phone
1 coconut size glass eyeball
1 football helmet
1 football
1 softball
1 hard ball
1 basketball
1 socker ball
1 golf ball
1 nerf ball
1 frisbee
1 pirate’s hook
1 ground markers
1 can Ironlak spray paint
1 American flag
1 33 1/3 record (“Aphrodite’s Child”)
1 pair ear protectors
1 TV manual
1 sieve for mud bugs
1 toy airplane
1 toy boat
1 one-legged plastic cowboy figure
1 daisy necklace
1 Dri-Fit long sleeve black knit tee (nice)
3 odd sandals
1 tennis shoe with sock
1 pair ladies Ann Klein shoes (perfect condition)
1 bottle perfume
1 baby doll duck taped to a one-use plastic water bottle
1 turtle shell
1 crawdad
5 assorted feathers
1 message in a bottle
1 3-ring notebook
1 banana split dish
1 Shakespeare’s Pizza cup