Earth Day 2008

The Anacostia Watershed Society (AWS) and its partners invite you to help us 'Pickup Mother Earth!' during the 14th Annual Anacostia Watershed Earth Day Cleanup & Rally Celebration on Saturday, April 26, 2008.

Trash cleanups will take place from 8:30AM to 12:00PM at sites throughout the watershed. If you would like to become an Earth Day cleanup volunteer, keep reading below. All volunteers will receive a free 2008 Earth Day t-shirt. This year's shirt will feature children's art and poetry centered on our 2008 Earth Day theme 'Pickup Mother Earth'.

Download: 2008 Earth Day Flyer [PDF format, legal size]

Download: 2008 Earth Day PSA [WAV format]

Following the cleanups, all of our volunteers and the public at large are invited to help us celebrate the day with food, live entertainment, and community spirit at our Earth Day Rally Celebration at Seafarers Yacht Club in the District of Columbia. The rally runs from 12:00PM to 2:00PM. Click here for more information about the rally.

Thanks go out to all of our 2008 Earth Day Sponsors and Partners for making this event possible! To become an event sponsor or partner, call AWS at 301-699-6204.

Trash poses a major threat to the health and beauty of the Anacostia River and its watershed land. In fact, the river is so gunked up with litter and debris that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified it as 'impaired by trash' in early 2007. The Anacostia is only the second river in the United States to receive this dubious recognition.

AWS needs your help to bring greater public awareness to the Anacostia's trash problems, and Earth Day 2008 is a great time to get involved! You can volunteer to help us remove trash and floating debris on Saturday, April 26, 2008, from one of more than 30 cleanup sites spread throughout the District of Columbia, Montgomery County (MD), and Prince George's County (MD). Each cleanup site is run by one of our 2008 Earth Day partner organizations. Cleanups will begin at 8:30 a.m. and continue through 12:00 p.m. Choose your site from the list above and RSVP to volunteer today!

During Earth Day 2007, AWS, its partner organizations, and volunteers managed to remove 49 tons of trash and debris from the Anacostia River in one day! Still, this was just a drop in the bucket when compared to the estimated 20,000,000 tons of trash and debris entering the river each year. Cleaning the entire Anacostia watershed will take a lot more work than anyone can do in one day. That's why we gather all our volunteers together for an Earth Day environmental rally following our Earth Day trash cleanup.

AWS's Earth Day Rally Celebration is not just a chance to reward our industrious volunteers with free food and entertainment, it's a chance to change public attitudes about the Anacostia River and the environment in general. Each year, we invite elected officials from all levels of government (local, state, and federal) to tell us about the environmental policies they support; in turn, we get to show them just how much we care about clean water. We also invite members of the media to the rally so they can get the word out to everyone about the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area's most under-appreciated resource: the Anacostia River.

The 2008 AWS Earth Day Rally will be extra special as we debut a new community dance performance by renowned choreographer Marylee Hardenbergh tentatively titled, "Green Dance." The performance will include dancers from around the region stationed on the western shore of the river, on boats in the river, and on the pedestrian walkway of the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge. Ms. Hardenbergh has created similar performances through her organization Global Site Performance on the Mississippi River in Minnesota, the Housatonic River in Connecticut, and the Volga River in Yaroslavl, Russia. Do not miss this spectacular event!