River Clean-Up w/ Phi Kappa Psi & the Ocean Conservancy

On Saturday September 26th, the Rivers Institute organized a river clean-up with the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at RiverScape in downtown Dayton. The fraternity contacted us about potential service work revolved around the Dayton community and its rivers in August and we were happy to facilitate such an event. We were even happier when we realized it was the group's first-ever visit to RiverScape and we hope it is just the beginning to connecting them to the river and the larger Dayton community.
This clean-up was also exciting because it was the first time the Rivers Institute partnered with the Ocean Conservancy in their annual world-wide Inter-Coastal Clean-Up (ICC), to eliminate marine debris. The Rivers Institute met with the Ocean Conservancy two weeks ago, during their visit to Dayton, and realized we had a clean-up scheduled one week after their 24th annual ICC event, which takes place every third Saturday of September. The Ocean Conservancy was happy to include our clean-up and sent us data cards to fill out and submit for their annual report; the only statistical data distributed world-wide on marine debris and litter.
Our group of 20 volunteers collected over 12 bags of trash and became part of over 400,000 people, who all cleaned up litter on rivers and beaches around the world. Please take a minute to check out the Ocean Conservancy's website to learn more about the ICC and to watch the short youtube video on this year's clean up.
We are looking forward to being part of the ICC in the future and helping the Ocean Conservancy celebrate 25 years of cleaning up the world's waterways! A special thanks to Stewards, AJ Ferguson, Alex Galluzo, Dom Miller and Drew Morrison, for their time and effort spent on the clean-up....not to mention the two shopping carts Dom pulled out of the river!!!