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Games, speeches and a passion for a litter-free Raleigh made the celebration for one-man trash-trapping phenom Gus Vandermeeren a memorable affair.

Neuse Riverkeeper Samantha Krop was on hand for the party at the Knights of Columbus facility in Raleigh last Friday night. Attendees included friends and a community of people from all walks of life meeting up regularly to host their own trash cleanups.

“It was a good range of folks, and it was generally a very celebratory, sweet and much-needed community event,” Samantha said. “Gus gave a big thank you to everyone for helping and professed his passion for picking up litter, which is just amazing.”

At the root of the celebration was a Gus’s major milestone of filling up his 10,000th bag of roadside litter, a process he started six years ago. That number of bags is estimated to equal 75 tons of trash. And now that he’s met that goal, he said he’s not hanging up his trash picker.

“He’s really passionate about community cleanups. That is what he says keeps him going,” Samantha said. “We need people like Gus, people who are willing to self-organize and organize their communities, because trash is such is prolific problem.”

Samantha took the opportunity to introduce partygoers to Sound Rivers and its Litter-Free Rivers partnership with The Great Raleigh Cleanup. Many in attendance volunteers with The Great Raleigh Cleanup but hadn’t been aware of the fleet of trash traps on urban waterways in the Raleigh area.

“I pitched working together on trash trap monitoring and cleanout and people were really receptive, so I’m looking forward to that collaboration,” Samantha said.

Want to host your own cleanup? Sound Rivers can assist! Email Volunteer Coordinator Emily Fritz at emily@soundrivers.org.

Find out when the next trash trap cleanout is here, and how you/your group can “Adopt a Trash Trap” for a month here!