Charles River Watershed Association hosts 24th Earth Day cleanup
NEWTON — Volunteers with the Charles River Watershed Association spent their Earth Day picking up old bottles, cans, and big bags of trash along the Charles River as part of the organization's 24th annual Earth Day cleanup.
The cleanup took place at 80 different sites throughout the weekend, with thousands of volunteers from organizations across the state coming together to pick up some trash and show some love to the planet.
"It's Earth Day so you got to make it happen," said volunteer Jeff Cress.
In Newtown, organization members and volunteers lined the riverbank, collecting trash of all kinds, like newspapers, plastic bags, and even a full unopened bottle of wine.
"It is really important," said Emily Norton, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association. "We have areas of the river where if the trash is just left there, it's caught up by wildlife who might eat it, get trapped in it."
"It's a beautiful area that needs to be preserved," said Cress. "It looks good and we want to keep it clean."
Though Norton and her volunteers said there was no shortage of trash to collect, work crews also cleared walking trails along the river of leaves and sticks.
"You go to trails to hike and have a nice experience and it stinks when people don't respect it the same way you do," said another volunteer.
With over 3,000 volunteers cleaning up from Hopkinton to Boston, picking up trash is just one of the many ways we can help out our planet.
"The actions you take really can make a difference," said Norton. "If your local community has not banned plastic bags, banned nip bottles, banned single-use plastic — we can do these things at the local level and then ideally it will happen at the state level," Norton said.