Cheers to Clean Water 2026 Results!

Thanks to 150+ people who volunteered their time on a beautiful Saturday morning to remove dozens of bags of litter from Baltimore’s streets as part of our 9th Annual Cheers to Clean Water event!

We were thrilled to partner again with Blue Water Baltimore and are ever grateful to our eight generous local brewery partners who supported our volunteers with vouchers for free beverages after the event. Please stop by these fabulous local breweries to say thank you and toast “Cheers!” to clean water!

Volunteers brought enthusiasm and passion for keeping the city’s streets clean!

We also returned this year to Cambridge, MD, on Sunday, September 20th, to remove litter from Cambridge Creek and help protect the Choptank River from plastic pollution.

As in previous years, our volunteers counted high frequency litter items to help us identify policy options to stop trash at the source. This year we focused on beverage containers and plastic carryout shopping bags. Volunteers collected over 2,443 plastic and glass bottles and cans that would otherwise have washed downstream with our stormwater, clogging our infrastructure and contributing to microplastic pollution in the bay. Maryland does not have a bottle bill (a statewide beverage container deposit return system or “recycling refund”) to help incentivize the recycling of beverage containers consumed away from home. Without this powerful added financial incentive and cash value on beverage containers, the empties are often disposed or littered instead, contributing to beverage containers being one of the most common litter types across the state.

We were dismayed to also find over 361 plastic carryout shopping bags in our four Baltimore City cleanup locations. Baltimore City has a comprehensive plastic bag policy, including a ban on plastic carryout bags under 4mils thick, so we expected to find fewer plastic bags. They have decreased in our litter counts since the bag policy went into effect, but the fact that we still find plastic carryout bags shows that there is room for improvement in the implementation of this policy.

On the other hand, compare this to result to Cambridge, which does not have a plastic bag policy in place, where we found nearly three times as many plastic bags per volunteer per hour of cleaning up. Next we’re examining hot spots for plastic bags so that we can focus interventions where they are most likely to have a positive impact. Keep following us to track progress on this issue!

We loved seeing so many returning faces as well as all of the new folks joining us for this event. We’re glad you’re on this journey with us toward a trash free Maryland!

Please visit and thank our generous cleanup partners! Cheers to clean water!