Trash Talk: Inside America's Largest River Cleanup Organization, Living Lands & Waters

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What started out as one guy with a jon boat picking up trash along the Mississippi in his hometown has since evolved into one of the largest, best known, most inspirational organizations in the country. In this episode, Educational Facilitator Mike Coyne-Logan describes how Living Lands & Waters (LLW) grew from the hands and mind of Chad Pregracke to the purpose-driven organization it is today. We talk about LLW’s core mission and how it has evolved over time from clean ups to also include summer camps, planting trees, and teaching about conservation and stewardship. Clean ups remain their primary purpose, though, and they run them across the Midwest on rivers large and small, even a couple of lakes. Mike talks about the logistics required to arrange clean-ups, some of the unique items they’ve found, and how they managed to pull 52 cars out of the rivers around Pittsburgh. We talk about where all that trash comes from, what they do with it after it has been collected, and what we can each do as individuals to reduce the impact of trash in our rivers.