The full haul
42,465pounds removedThat is 21.23 tons of trash, tires and scrap metal taken out of the Missouri River corridor.
What made up the weight?
Select a section to see how the final weight was assembled.
27,415 lb
Loose trash and debris. Bagged trash and bulky debris recorded in ten dumpster and dump-trailer loads. Two haul weights are documented estimates.
Every pound was lifted, loaded and hauled by people.
Final weight combines scale receipts with documented estimates. Object counts come from the final master tally.
Explore the river
Results, place by place
Select a point on the route to see what the crew removed there. This first wireframe shows bags and tires from the final master tally.
Ring size shows tons
Put it in perspective
How big was the cleanup?
Weight, volume and distance turn the final tally into something easier to picture.
Choose a comparison to see the cleanup at scale
8,493Great Blue HeronsAt about five pounds each, it would take 8,493 Great Blue Herons to match the weight removed. Each of the 196 birds in the final grid represents about 43 herons.
Illustrative comparisons use the final tally plus the stated reference assumptions. Actual bag fill and bird weights vary.
The human haul
Every piece came out by hand.
One piece at a time
Picked from the riverbank.
Bottles were plucked from drift piles. Tires were wrestled out of the mud. Every bag began with someone bending down.
No machinery
Carried, loaded and hauled.
Volunteers and crew moved the entire cleanup over sand, roots and steep banks using their own hands and backs.
The things that surprised us
You find what the river keeps.
The tally included the everyday, the enormous and the things nobody expected to see on a riverbank.
01
A beached wave runner
It took a crew and plenty of persistence to haul away the Sea-Doo stranded on Baltimore Island.
Also pulled from the river
Fiberglass boatFitness trampolineGarage door sectionMetal buoyThree shopping cartsSix car bumpers
The bottle audit
Every bottle counted by hand.
The crew chose mini liquor bottles as a focus from the beginning because they are small, common and almost always single-use.
6,339 mini bottles
Each bottle was picked from the riverbank, sorted and counted. The audit turns thousands of tiny pieces of plastic into a record of what keeps reaching the Missouri.
Laid end to end, they would stretch about 2,245 feet, more than three and a half times the height of the Gateway Arch.
Length uses an estimated 4.25-inch bottle. Bottle dimensions vary by brand.
What the crew found
The five largest categories in a 98-type hand count.
Fireball1,312
New Amsterdam978
Unidentifiable684
American Honey518
Smirnoff294
River Notes
The stories behind the numbers
Weather changed plans. Volunteers changed what was possible. Every shift left its own stories behind.
Shift 8 & 9 · The Last Haul
“My bucket is indeed overflowing.”
Alyssa Thomas looks back on the final days, the human power behind 21 tons and the crew that made the river its home for 49 days.
Read the final River NoteShift 7 · When the River Calls the Shots
“We all knew that it probably wasn’t great news for our beloved camping site.”
A forecast spike sent the crew to higher ground and forced a hard change of plans.
Read Shift 7Shift 4
A Sea-Doo, a beaver and laundry in a Folger’s can
Baltimore Island delivered the project’s most memorable machine and a week full of stories.
Read Shift 449 days in photographs
See the Clean Sweep
Camp life, volunteer days, trash hauls and the river between them.
Loading the live tracker gallery…
198unique volunteers
973volunteer hours
164general volunteers
34MRR crew
The people who moved it
All of it came out by hand.
Across 198 river miles, volunteers and crew from river communities, partner groups and Stream Teams picked, carried, loaded and unloaded every bag, tire, refrigerator and oddball find.
The final activity report counts repeat volunteers once. Its crew total includes people who worked shifts or brought food to the crew.
Behind the work
Meet the Core Crew
The Big Muddy Clean Sweep ran on a small crew with decades of river experience, diverse backgrounds and a wide range of skills.
Swipe or scroll to meet all six
Meet Kevin Tosie
Kevin Tosie
After volunteering with Missouri River Relief in college, Kevin joined the staff in 2018. His passion remains removing literal tons of trash from the Missouri River.
Meet Alyssa Thomas
Alyssa Marie Thomas
Missouri River Relief’s Stewardship Coordinator, Alyssa brought five years with the organization and experience from a previous Big Muddy Clean Sweep.
Meet Ryan McCoy
Ryan McCoy
A longtime teacher, paddler and safety-boat operator, Ryan worked downstream from Lawrence, Kansas, to join the Clean Sweep crew.
Meet Melanie Knocke
Melanie Knocke
An astronomy educator, author, narrator, paddler and MRR board member, Melanie joined the crew to give back to her home state.
Meet Mud Britt
Matthew “Mud” Britt
An avid paddler, expert outdoorsman, carpenter and Army infantry veteran, Mud is always ready to find the next river adventure.
Meet Eileen Combs
Eileen Combs
Eileen volunteers with MRR education programs, community cleanups and MR340 merchandise operations after a 30-year banking career.