At 10 a.m. Saturday crew teams readied for races and runners strode through the sunny banks of the Charles River, never noticing the littered paper, Doritos bags and SoBe bottles lining the water’s edge.
“The closer you get, the worse it looks,” said Kathleen Clair, manager of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety at the Boston University Medical Campus.
Clair and a friend opted to skip their rugby game and instead spend their morning participating in the second annual Charles River Earth Day Cleanup, organized on the BU campus by EHS and the Environmental Student Organization.
About 40 BU volunteers met at 9 a.m. in front of Marsh Chapel wearing jeans, old sneakers, bandannas and latex gloves, and set out to clean the area stretching from River Street to Massachusetts Avenue. Volunteers each filled about two 60-gallon trash bags.
Donning a black and white RENT T-shirt with the words, “no day but today,” College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Cat Campbell dug through the muck to find children’s slippers, a kitchen knife and needles near the footbridge from the BU Beach to the Esplanade.
“Look, I found OJ’s glove!” Campbell said, laughing and holding a dripping black rubber glove to shower her friend, Emerson College senior Brian Black.
“I took him here as part of his graduation gift-day,” said Campbell, an ESO member majoring in environmental analysis and policy. “It’s a lot of fun.”
Four BU students chose a corner of the river’s edge that didn’t offer a scenic view. The area they chose was a corner under the BU Bridge, no more than 12 feet wide, unnoticeable due to the wooden walkway under the bridge.
“I feel like if we clean all the trash here there’d be nothing left to stand on,” said CAS freshman Lindsay Hanlon, standing on top of a trash heap in the corner.
Hanlon, who runs near the Charles, said it makes her sick to realize how dirty it is.
“Any other river bank this time of year would be teeming with life. Too few people do their part,” said CAS sophomore Carl Andersen, who has been involved in cleanups before both in Boston and Dartmouth, his hometown.
CAS sophomore Sarah Carlson found syringes and seat cushions.
“I think Boston should hire people to do this, but since they don’t … it’s definitely worth it,” Carlson said. “It’s really easy to roller blade past the trash.”
ESO and EHS sponsor their own river cleanups in the fall as well. Last year, more than 60 BU students participated in the Earth Day Cleanup, according to ESO President Robyn Kenney who said she had hoped to see up to 100 volunteers Saturday.
“I walked the area before then again after and it looked so much better,” Kenney said. “It was a really good effort by everyone.”
Joining BU in the effort to cleanup banks of the 80-mile river were community groups and colleges including Northeastern University, Suffolk University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Boston sponsors were the Charles River Watershed Association and the Massachusetts Community Water Watch.
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