Plastic in Waterbodies
Plastic in water is the most urgent of all — retrieving it before it fragments and washes beyond reach.
Overview
What this program is about.
Of all the places plastic ends up, water is the most dangerous. Submerged and sun-struck, plastic in rivers and lakes breaks down faster, spreads further, and is far harder to recover than plastic on land. What sits on a riverbank today is in the water tomorrow — and in the food chain soon after.
Our teams and volunteers retrieve everything from fresh litter to silt-trapped legacy waste along waterbodies and their banks and shores: bottles, bags, wrappers, fishing line, and the fragments already starting to break apart. We work methodically, stretch by stretch, so a cleaned bank stays clean instead of refilling within a week.
Timing is everything. Plastic left in water doesn't disappear — it embrittles, breaks, and scatters into pieces too small to ever collect. Every kilo we pull out today is a kilo that never becomes microplastic tomorrow.
What we do
On the ground, this looks like…
Bank & shore clearing
We focus on the setbacks — the banks, shores and flood lines where waste accumulates and re-enters the water with every rain.
Legacy-waste retrieval
Beyond fresh litter, we dig out the silt-trapped plastic that has been building up, layer by layer, for years.
Urgency first
Water speeds up fragmentation, so waterbody plastic is prioritised — retrieved while it can still be recovered.
Sort, weigh, record
Everything we collect is sorted and weighed, turning each cleanup into data we can act on and publish.
Why it matters
The stakes, plainly.
Plastic in water fragments faster than anywhere else — the window to retrieve it is short and closing.
Once plastic fragments into microplastics, retrieval becomes impossible. The window to remove it is now.
Clean waterbodies protect the people, livestock and wildlife that depend on them every single day.
Join a waterbody cleanup
Most of this work happens on the ground, with ordinary people giving a morning. Find a drive to join, or help us fund the next one.
More of our work
