Cheers to Clean Water 2023! 🌊 🍻
Cheers to Clean Water 2023!
We are delighted to be teaming up with Baltimore City’s beloved local breweries to harness the power of communities to turn the tide on litter. Cheers to Clean Water volunteers have collected over 11,200 pounds of trash since the event's inception!
Cheers to Clean Water is so much more than just a trash cleanup. We like to say we are reducing trash "one cleanup and one policy at a time." All of our cleanup events are tied to policy change. The statewide styrofoam ban, local plastic bag laws and more recently, Producer Responsibility for Packaging, are policy changes with roots in Cheers to Clean Water.
This year we are diving into the problems of Plastic Bags & Plastic Bottles, which are our Policy Priority Items. We will be collecting data to inform our advocacy.
You may ask how can data from a one time cleanup make a difference? It has in the past! Our data has helped ban expanded polystyrene in Maryland and plastic bags in Baltimore City. The number of items collected create a snapshot of what's littering our streets and neighborhoods on one Saturday in September. That snapshot is inevitably familiar to all of us because we have all seen the same types of litter. We use the snapshot to tell the story of how tired we are of trash and litter and it works!
*Annual Dumpster Dive Plastic Bag Counts*
We are indebted to our longtime partners in this project: Blue Water Baltimore, Union Craft Brewing, Checkerspot Brewing Company, Peabody Heights Brewery and Charm City Meadworks. We are happy to welcome the Ministry of Brewing and Pickett Brewing Company as new partners this year! All of these organizations are committed to reducing trash and litter. We would love to have you join us -- it's a fun morning of learning about a local business and a bit about trash policy, a cleanup and a chance to meet new people.
