Tarrant’s “litter gitter” installed

TARRANT — Project Litter Gitter partners installed a “litter gitter” device in Five Mile Creek at Chief William C Hewitt Park in Tarrant on Thursday, September 16. ABC Coke, a division of Drummond Company, is sponsoring the litter gitter for one year. Jefferson County has 11 litter gitter’s and this is the first in Five […]

34th Annual Alabama Coastal Cleanup

For 34 years, groups and individuals across the Alabama Gulf Coast have been coming together one day a year to clean up our waterways and shorelines. It’s the Alabama Coastal Cleanup, and the 34th annual event is set for Saturday, Sept. 18. “We are looking forward to a large, coast-wide event. It’s a great way […]

Freshwater Land Trust to install 11th Litter Gitter in Tarrant, 11,000+ pounds of trash collected

Freshwater Land Trust (FLT) and their partners have a lot to celebrate on National Cleanup Day this coming Saturday, September 18th. 11 Litter Gitters In December of 2019, FLT launched Project Litter Gitter, one of the most successful local water quality programs in recent memory. What’s a Litter Gitter? A Litter Gitter is an in-stream litter collection device patented by Osprey […]

Waterways cleanups progress to Milton area

Northwest Florida is home to a new estuary program whose mission is restoring and protecting the water quality and natural resources of the Pensacola and Perdido watersheds. The program, known as the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program, is using a $2 million grant to establish a comprehensive conservation management plan. PPBED received funding from the EPA […]

Osprey removes 100K pounds of floating litter

Osprey Initiative has celebrated a major milestone: removing 100,000 pounds of floating litter from waters. Osprey Initiative, an environmental contractor based in Mobile, Alabama, is owned by Tangipahoa Parish native Don Bates. The company’s team began collecting data in 2017 and now works with partners in nine states to install, maintain and collect data from […]

City makes progress on litter collection, but sources remain problematic

Reviewing his multiple blogs and social media profiles, still archived online after his death in 2016, two things about Rob Nykvist are clear: First, he was an environmentalist. His journal entries, photos and videos, posted between 2011 and 2016, may be the best record of the extent of Mobile’s litter problem during a period when […]

State environmental group eases restrictions for Mobile stormwater management

A screen shot of the WKRG news story shows Osprey founder Don Bates in a boat on the Mobile waters.

MOBILE, Ala. (WKRG) — The City of Mobile’s efforts to keep stormwater litter under control has paid off. “The City of Mobile has been working a really long time to get our act together on stormwater litter — and we have,” said Chief Resilience Officer Casi Callaway. Callaway told WKRG News 5 the city has […]

Volunteers clear trash in Manchac

An Albany church youth group removed 650 pounds of litter and recyclable items from Manchac this past weekend with the help of Keep Tangipahoa Beautiful and Osprey Initiative. Because of the pandemic, St. Margaret Youth Group Mission Krewe was unable to take its usual week-long summer mission trip. Instead, the 25 high school students, young […]

Mobile tackling city’s litter problem

Thursday, Mayor Sandy Stimpson announced a targeted effort to crack down on the city’s litter problem. Stimpson is up for re-election next month and admits his administration hasn’t solved the trashy issue, despite spending $1 million every year to pick up what people carelessly toss out.

Toledo installs trash traps to keep Lake Erie clean

The goal is to catch the garbage before it can even reach the lake. TOLEDO, Ohio — The city of Toledo is installing seven trash capture devices in waterways within five miles of Lake Erie to catch debris before it even reaches the lake in an effort to keep the lake clean. “By the time […]

A new way to look at litter

Litter is shown laying on the sidewalk and sorted by type (plastic, aluminum, styrofoam, and so on).

It may look like a basket full of trash to most people, but it’s a treasure trove of data to Ellie Mallon, project manager for the Osprey Initiative.

Litter-Gitter now collecting floatable waste in Fayetteville

A new device is helping to clean up floatable waste from Clear Creek in Fayetteville. The city, in partnership with the Osprey Initiative, the Illinois River Watershed Partnership, and others, have installed a ‘Litter-Gitter’ across a portion of the waterway to help collect floatable waste from the creek. The device, located on Clear Creek just […]

Litter Gitter has successful 1st year

After one year of being installed at Griffin Brook off Broadway Street, the Litter Gitter litter collection device has collected hundreds of pounds of trash and recyclables. A total of 112.12 pounds of material collected from the Litter Gitter were recycled, and a total of 332.31 pounds of trash were disposed of from the Litter […]

Creek has 900 pounds less litter

Seventeen volunteers collected over 900 pounds of litter and debris from Ponchatoula Creek during a three-and-a-half hour cleanup near the Wadesboro boat launch Saturday. The Osprey Initiative-sponsored event had 12 of Osprey Initiative employees and five locals embarking on the cleanup in kayaks and boats at 8:30 a.m. By noon, volunteers had removed 300 pounds […]

Clam Bayou’s New Litter Gitter

A cage-like device floating in Clam Bayou – dubbed “litter gitter” by scientists – has one job to do: report on the amount and types of waste in Florida waterways.  The Osprey Initiative team, in conjunction with the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, deployed Clam Bayou’s “litter gitter” on Tuesday, May 4 in an effort to […]

Litter Gitters deployed in Bay Area waterways to remove trash

The Osprey Initiative team are carrying the metal Litter Gitter to the water to install and catch floating litter.

TAMPA, Fla. – A new device being deployed into area waterways could help to remove trash and protect the environment.  The Tampa Bay Estuary Program and other local environmental groups are working with Osprey Initiative to install the first Litter Gitters in the Tampa Bay area. The device works as a trash trap to intercept litter and funnel […]

Litter Gitter grabs 2,000-plus pounds in year

Tangipahoa Parish Government has signed a contract to continue funding a Litter Gitter in Ponchatoula Creek for another six months using grant funds. Over the past year, one Litter Gitter has collected 208 pounds of debris and 743 pounds of litter from Ponchatoula Creek, allowing 213 pounds of litter to be recycled and another 530 […]

Talking litter with Midday Mobile

Sean Sullivan with FM Talk 1065 talked to Don Bates from Osprey Initiative about all things Litter Gitter.  They talk about how trash is making it into our waters, coordinating clean up of the watersheds with the city, and how weather events affect their work.

Volunteers hit the water in Baldwin County for the 5th annual floating cleanup

BALDWIN COUNTY, Ala. (WPMI) — Volunteers gathered in Baldwin County Saturday for the South Alabama Land Trust’s fifth annual floating cleanup on Magnolia River near Week’s Bay. Volunteers from both Mobile and Baldwin counties took kayaks and canoes out onto the water to collect trash. “Picking up the trash, retrieving the trash, is certainly helpful from […]

More than 2,000 Pounds of Trash Collected in Charlotte Rivers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – About a year ago the city of Charlotte received a device to help collect trash from the rivers. A “Litter Gitter” is a floating collection device that helps stop trash from flowing further downriver. Once a week, the engagement manager for the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation, Greg Nance, comes out to the creeks […]

Litter Gitter installed in Trussville’s Pinchgut Creek

A new device has been installed in Pinchgut Creek, in Trussville, and the purpose is to help keep the waterway clean. The “Litter Gitter” is one of 10 across Jefferson County. The device in Trussville was funded by the Jefferson County Department of Health, which also funded a device in Brighton. The Litter Gitter will […]

Parish tackles uphill battle against litter

Keep Tangipahoa Beautiful and Osprey Initiative recently sponsored a litter cleanup in the Manchac area to tackle a place that continues to be treated like a dumping site. Eight volunteers, including Councilwomen Kim Coates and Brigette Delatte Hyde, picked up 135 bags of trash, a commode and a motor on the low road. “Overall it […]

Above the Waterline: Finding solutions to keep our waterways clean

Trash can be a galvanizing topic for most people, especially river and nature lovers. We are disgusted at the sight of the plastic bottles and bags, single-use products, Styrofoam, and balls of every sort that float in the water—moving from one riverbank to another on voyages downstream or sinking to the river bottom. Most of […]

What do our trash traps really trap?

What do our trash traps really trap? Chattahoochee Riverkeeper takes a deep dive into the effectiveness of in-stream Litter Gitters Nearly everyone that has ventured into our region’s recreational areas has noticed a bit of trash around trails and parking lots; but what many fail to realize is that trash littered on land will inevitably […]

New litter traps keep plastic bags, bottles, diapers out of Birmingham waterways

At a massive culvert under 7th Street North in Birmingham, the underground springs flowing beneath the city’s downtown corridor emerge to see the light of day, becoming Valley Creek, a major tributary of the Black Warrior River. For years it was one of the most heavily littered spots in the city, as thousands of bottles, […]

Riverkeeper, KSBB and city to trap trash in creek on way to Ogeechee

Ogeechee Riverkeeper, Keep Statesboro-Bulloch Beautiful and the city plan to lower the boom – a boom-type litter trap – on floating trash in Little Lott’s Creek. Keep Statesboro-Bulloch Beautiful, or KSBB, is a Keep America Beautiful affiliate sponsored by Statesboro’s city government, while Ogeechee Riverkeeper is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the Ogeechee […]