From Rock Creek Conservancy:

“Spring has officially sprung, and Rock Creek Conservancy invites you to get outside and clean up your favorite parks during the 11th Annual Extreme Cleanup. The main event will take place between 10 AM and 4 PM on April 13th with satellite cleanups occurring every weekend throughout April.

Every year, the Extreme Cleanup mobilizes thousands of people to remove litter from more than 70 sites along the 33-mile length of Rock Creek in conjunction with Alice Ferguson Foundation’s Annual Potomac Watershed Cleanup Day. The goal is a total people-powered stream cleanup of Rock Creek and its tributaries.

These volunteer sites will include some of the area’s most iconic parks thanks to the Conservancy’s partnership with Rock Creek Park, a unit of the National Park Service, and Montgomery Parks, part of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The Conservancy also works closely with DC Parks and Recreation, and other community partners to make this event a success.

The Extreme Cleanup is the organization’s biggest event of the year. Last year, more than 2,000 volunteers attended the Extreme Cleanup. Those volunteers worked together to clean up more than 1,600 bags of litter, two tons of bulk junk, and 76 car tires. Over the past decade, Extreme Cleanup volunteers have removed over 20,000 garbage bags full of litter from Rock Creek.

The impact of this cleanup goes far beyond Rock Creek. When a plastic bag or bottle is left uncollected in Rock Creek it will continue to float downstream. That piece of trash can make its way into the Potomac River, drift to the Chesapeake Bay, and ultimately end up in the Atlantic Ocean, where it would join the 5.2 trillion pieces of plastic trash that currently pollute the Earth’s largest bodies of water.

“When we work together, small changes can have a large impact,” stated Arielle Conti, Stewardship Manager at Rock Creek Conservancy. “The Extreme Cleanup is an excellent opportunity to gather your friends and family to give back to your favorite local parks for a day. We can all become stewards of our environment.”

The Conservancy asks everyone to find a site in their community and register at bit.ly/extremecleanup2019. Groups and new site leaders are welcome. Those who would like to host a cleanup at their own site should email [email protected] rockcreekconservancy.org.”