As many as 10,000 volunteers are expected to hit the outdoors on Saturday, and they’ll have trash bags in hand. The annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup has been a spring tradition in the D.C. area since 1989.

At last year’s event, volunteers collected a total of 346,444 pounds of litter — that’s 5,514 bags of trash, and 2,434 bags of recycling.

“This year we’re focusing on single-use beverage containers — so aluminum, plastic bottles, glass bottles,” says Samantha Battersby, with the Alice Ferguson Foundation, the group that coordinates the regional cleanup effort among hundreds of local organizations. “We’re going to get numbers on how many are entering our watershed, and see what we can do to make changes to reduce them entering our watershed.”

Last year, there was a focus on disposable plastic straws — volunteers collected (and counted!) 9,726 of them. A few months later, D.C. implemented a ban on plastic straws.

Battersby says since the cleanup started 30 years ago, the tonnage of trash collected has been on the rise (more people are volunteering to help pick it up), but the composition of what’s collected is changing, in part due to government action.

“We definitely see a decrease in plastic bags,” says Battersby, crediting bag taxes in Montgomery County and D.C.

There will be big cleanups this weekend in places you’d expect — Rock Creek Park, Anacostia Park, along the Capital Crescent Trail — but also in some of the region’s less appreciated parks.

Nathan Harrington, with the group Ward 8 Woods, is leading a cleanup of Suitland Parkway.

“We have a legacy of decades of illegal dumping and littering that is going to take years to undo,” says Harrington.

About 75 volunteers are signed up to help out in Suitland Parkway. Harrington says it’s hard work. “We’re talking not just about bottles and cans, but also tires, and carpets, and appliances, sofas — you name it — that have been dumped in the woods over the years.”

Where To Help

If you want to get involved, chances are there is a cleanup site near you — there are close to 300 cleanup sites throughout the region on Saturday, and even more of them later in April (Earth Month!).

Here are a few places to check:

• The Alice Ferguson Foundation has a regional map, listing events across the area.
• Rock Creek Conservancy has 70 cleanup locations through the creek’s watershed.
• The Anacostia Watershed Society has 30 sites near the river.
• The Potomac Conservancy has cleanups at Fletchers Cove, Jones Point Park, and Roosevelt Island (plus a 5k run/walk!).