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Earth Day Cleanup
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Earth Day Registration is Open Now!
Donate to support Earth Day
View 2026 Earth Day Cleanup Sites and Register
About Earth Day
Started by DC native Howard Gasaway of Seafarers Yacht Club in 1985, the annual Anacostia River Earth Day Cleanup is AWS's largest annual volunteer event. Hundreds of volunteers from around the watershed picked up trash, served our community, and enjoyed the Anacostia River. Read our 2025 Earth Day Cleanup After Action Report to see the amazing work accomplished by our volunteers, site leaders, sponsors, and government partners.
We welcome all community members to be a part of one of the largest single-day volunteer events in the DMV. Please reach out to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with any questions.
Our map of cleanup sites is below! You can also view our cleanup sites and register by clicking the button below:
Advocating for a Bottle Bill
Our Earth Day Cleanup is a part of our advocacy efforts towards a Bottle Bill in both Maryland and D.C. Bottle Bills incentivize aluminum, glass, and plastic recycling through a deposit and return system. Individuals receive a 10-15 cent return on the items they recycle. Currently less than 25% of bottles and cans actually end up being recycled, and end up in landfills, on the ground, or in our waterways. Our cleanup helps us collect data on how many bottles we are finding in the watershed to support advocating for a Bottle Bill. You can find more information on the Maryland Bottle Bill here, and the D.C. Bottle Bill here.
City Nature Challenge - Pick Up the Trash to Uncover the Treasure!
The City Nature Challenge is an international community science event in which people can document all types of wildlife in their communities. This year, the CNC spans four days, from April 24 - April 27, and coincides with our Earth Day Cleanup. We are encouraging participants of the Cleanup on April 25th to, in addition to picking up trash, taking pictures of wildlife and plants to upload onto the INaturalist application. Click the image below for details and instructions. Participants have until May 10, 2026 to upload their photos. Pick up the trash to uncover the treasure!
In the spirit of sustainability, we collaborated with a local artist to design this year's shirt to offer for sale through our Bonfire page rather than distribute them widely at cleanup sites. We reflected upon the impact of textile waste and recognized that we were part of the problem! Every year, about 92 million tons of garments end up in landfills, with the average US consumer discarding nearly 82 pounds of clothes. We are an organization that prides ourselves on solving problems and it is in that vein that we set out to reduce any potential waste from our largest cleanup event of the year! Of course, if you want to purchase a commemorative t-shirt to help us raise much needed funds, we would appreciate the support, but there is no obligation on your part to do so. To learn more about the impact of textile waste, check out the following resources:
Statistics about Fashion Waste on Earth.org
Article on the impact of textile dyes at Fashion Revolution
Many Thanks to our 2026 Earth Day Cleanup Sponsors!
2026 Earth Day Cleanup Registration is OPEN
Checkout our map of cleanup sites below or click the button above to be directed to the map. Click on the map markers to learn more about the sites and register.
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