Getting Results: Volunteers remove nearly 6 tons of trash from Travis Cove
View more images on our Flickr site
About 70 Riverkeeper volunteers, staff and partners joined together Saturday to clean the shoreline at Travic Cove, a gorgeous stretch of shoreline in the City of Peekskill, that will soon be opened to the public with a new pedestrian trail connecting Charles Point and Riverfront Green parks.
The haul: 5.7 TONS of trash, plus 46 tires.
Thanks to Zero to Go, a Beacon-based recycling business, and the Peekskill DPW, we separated that and were able to salvage or recycle 46% of the haul—2.1 tons of scrap metal and a half a ton of recyclables.
In a word: Wow!
We’ll take what we learned and continue to work with great partners like Zero to Go to ensure that our 2014 Riverkeeper Sweep next Spring is not only successful at removing trash from the shoreline, but also successful at recycling and reusing as much of that trash as possible.
We want to thank Metro-North Railroad, which made accessing the shoreline safe, the City of Peekskill and its amazing DPW staff, the incomparable Zero to Go, as well as the businesses and organizations that contributed –Peekskill Brewery (which offered one free beverage to each participant, and hosted a fun meetup following the cleanup), Trinity Cruises (which made a financial contribution and donated four pairs of cruise tickets, each valued at upto $50, as raffle items to reward volunteers) and NYC Water Ski and Wakeboard School (which donated three free lessons, each valued at $190), Keep Rockland Beautiful (which loaned trash grabbers) and Bridgestone (which will recycle the tires at no charge).
Most of all, we want to thank our volunteers. They were simpley awesome. And it’s not only us who noticed. The Journal News published a great multimedia report on the cleanup, too. When Peekskill completes the project to connect Riverfront Green and Charles Point parks via a pedestrian path through Travis Cove, we can all thank these volunteers for that gorgeous view, unobstructed by garbage on the shoreline.
This is one of those Riverkeeper stories—we learned about a problem affecting the river in need of attention, we identified the strategy and partners we needed, and we solved it. Whether our goal is improving public access, restoring our fish or promoting a clean energy future, we find the way to achieve it. If you aren’t already a member, please consider making a donation today to become a member to support this kind of work.
And now for some more great photos from the cleanup:
