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Sound Rivers’ volunteer coordinator Emily Fritz met up with members of The Great Raleigh Cleanup last week to empty the Raleigh Trash Trout of its collection of trash.

“Last week was Creek Week, so it was perfect timing for us to have the clean out,” Emily said. “It went really well. It’s a good problem for us to have that there wasn’t a lot of trash. At that point, there hadn’t been a lot of rain—less rain washes less trash into the creek.”

Joining Emily for the clean-out were Preston Ross III and Tylor Owens, from The Great Raleigh Cleanup, and Eileen Doyle, an N.C. State University graduate student.

Located on Little Rock Creek on the grounds of the Walnut Creek Wetland Center, the Trash Trout is one of three passive litter-trapping devices Sound Rivers has installed on urban waterways over the past year. The others are located on Duffyfield Canal in New Bern and Jack’s Creek in Washington. Location scouting for two more is currently underway on tributaries of the Tar River in Greenville and the Neuse River in Kinston.

The devices are monitored to keep track of the amount of trash they’ve trapped, and when it starts to fill up, volunteers take on the task of emptying them out, and ridding the creeks of trash that would have eventually made its way into larger bodies water.