Davenport is one of just three cities in North America chosen for an experiment to fight litter. With cities in Canada and Mexico, it will participate in an effort to clean up waterways called the Marine Litter Pilot Project.
Collecting the litter will be Osprey Initiative from Mobile, Alabama. President and Owner, Don Bates, will set up booms to trap and collect trash in Duck Creek, Goose Creek, and Silver Creek.
“The real goal of all of this is not just to pick up the litter, but glean the information from this litter so you can do programmatic work upstream – that litter is going to tell a story.”
He says most of what’s collected will be “floatables,” including plastic bottles, food wrappers, and cigarette butts.
“If our trap was downstream from here and I’m catching Gatorade bottles, something more geared towards kids, then I’m able to say our litter source is a park. If it’s all Gatorade bottles and water bottles, I’m probably downstream from some ballfields.”
The Marine Litter Pilot Project is a partnership of an international organization, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, and the US EPA.
Davenport will also provide project updates and litter-fighting tips at a new website, davenportiowa.com/litter. And it’s hoped lessons learned from the pilot project will result in cleaner creeks, streams, and rivers in the Quad Cities area.
This story originally appeared on WVIK by Herb Trix. Read the original story online here.