Monthly Cleanup Of South Platte River Reveals Array Of Waste

DENVER (CBS4) -- Lots of people use the Platte River for recreation and well...maybe we should reconsider, because Sunday volunteers with Environment Colorado, CoPIRG, and Patagonia Denver pulled pounds of trash out of the river.

"We're just swimming in trash right now," says volunteer Alyssa Vuong.

Environment Colorado holds one of these cleanups every month and every month they pull out hundreds of pounds of trash. Josephine Rider a Clean Water Associate with Environment Colorado says, "You would be so surprised at the amount of trash that's in our rivers."

That's not just a problem for swimmers, it's a problem for all of us. The Platte is a main tributary that flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Our neighbors depend on its health.

"It actually provides drinking water for five other states. So what we do to this water really impacts a whole lot of other people" says Rider.

Volunteers fished out everything from muck, cans and E-scooters to pounds of plastic, which if it wasn't pulled out would have stayed in there for a long time. Rider says, "Nothing we use for just a few minutes should be in our world forever."

Some volunteers who came out say, it motivated them to be greener. Rylan Macvey says, "It definitely keeps you mindful of your local community and how you recycle, compost and do everything like that."

The volunteers sorted what they pulled out and recycled what they could.