The full haul
42,465pounds removedThat is 21.23 tons of trash, tires and scrap metal taken out of the Missouri River.
What made up the weight?
Select a section to explore the cleanup by category.
27,415 lb
Loose trash and debris. Plastic water bottles, Halloween decorations and thousands of mini liquor bottles filled bags along the route.
Every pound was lifted, loaded and hauled by people.
Weights combine measured hauls with estimates for items that could not be weighed individually.
Explore the river
Results, place by place
Select a point on the route to see what crews removed along each stretch of river.
Ring size shows tons
Put it in perspective
How big was the cleanup?
What does 21 tons of trash really look like? Click for some comparisons to put everything in perspective.
Choose a comparison to see the cleanup at scale
8,493Great Blue HeronsAt about five pounds each, it would take 8,493 Great Blue Herons to match the weight removed. Each of the 196 birds in the final grid represents about 43 herons.
One piece at a time
~125,000individual pieces of trashEvery bottle, can and piece of plastic had to be spotted on a riverbank, in a rack pile or across a sandbar, then picked up and packed by hand into one of 1,043 bags.
The things that surprised us
The river is full of surprises.
Alongside bottles and tires, crews found a WaveRunner, a playground slide, 74 feet of pipe and plenty they never saw coming.
01
A beached wave runner
It took a crew and plenty of persistence to haul away the Sea-Doo stranded on Baltimore Island.
Also pulled from the river
Fiberglass boatFitness trampolineGarage door sectionMetal buoyThree shopping cartsSix car bumpers
The bottle audit
Every bottle counted by hand.
From day one, the crew set aside mini liquor bottles because they are small, common and almost always single-use.
6,339 mini bottles
The crew picked up, sorted and counted each one. By the end, the bottles showed how quickly one small piece of single-use plastic can add up along the river.
Laid end to end, they would stretch about 2,245 feet, more than three and a half times the height of the Gateway Arch.
Length uses an estimated 4.25-inch bottle. Bottle dimensions vary by brand.
What the crew found
The five most common brands and categories found in the count.
Fireball1,312
New Amsterdam978
Unidentifiable684
American Honey518
Smirnoff294
River Notes
The stories behind the numbers
The river rose, the heat held on and the mosquitoes never let up. Still, our community kept showing up.
Shift 8 & 9 · The Last Haul
“My bucket is indeed overflowing.”
Alyssa Thomas looks back on the final days, the human power behind 21 tons and the crew that made the river its home for 49 days.
Read the final River NoteShift 7 · When the River Calls the Shots
“We all knew that it probably wasn’t great news for our beloved camping site.”
A forecast spike sent the crew to higher ground and forced a hard change of plans.
Read Shift 7Shift 4
A Sea-Doo, a beaver and laundry in a Folger’s can
At Baltimore Island, the crew found a Sea-Doo, met a beaver and did laundry in a Folger’s can.
Read Shift 4198 river miles in photos
The proof we got muddy.
Loading cleanup photos…
198unique volunteers
973volunteer hours
164general volunteers
34MRR crew
The people who moved it
All of it came out by hand.
Volunteers from river communities, Scout troops, Missouri Master Naturalists, partner organizations and people from all over the state joined the MRR crew to pick, carry, load and unload every bag, tire, refrigerator and oddball find.
Volunteer totals count each person once, even if they joined more than one cleanup. The crew total includes people who worked shifts or brought food to camp.
Behind the work
Meet the Core Crew
The Big Muddy Clean Sweep ran on a small crew with decades of river experience, diverse backgrounds and a wide range of skills. Open a card to meet the people behind the work.
Swipe or scroll to meet all six
Meet Kevin
Kevin Tosie
After volunteering with Missouri River Relief in college, Kevin joined the staff in 2018. His passion remains removing literal tons of trash from the Missouri River.
Meet Alyssa
Alyssa Marie Thomas
Missouri River Relief’s Stewardship Coordinator, Alyssa brought five years with the organization and experience from a previous Big Muddy Clean Sweep.
Meet Ryan
Ryan McCoy
A longtime teacher, paddler and safety-boat operator, Ryan worked downstream from Lawrence, Kansas, to join the Clean Sweep crew.
Meet Melanie
Melanie Knocke
An astronomy educator, author, narrator, paddler and MRR board member, Melanie joined the crew to give back to her home state.
Meet Mud
Matthew “Mud” Britt
An avid paddler, expert outdoorsman, carpenter and Army infantry veteran, Mud is always ready to find the next river adventure.
Meet Eileen
Eileen Combs
Eileen volunteers with MRR education programs, community cleanups and MR340 merchandise operations after a 30-year banking career.