Riverside Park — Two Cleanups, One Weekend

Riverside Park is a busy destination for summer picnics, which is genuinely great to see. Unfortunately, some of these joyous parties also leave on the river shore large quantities of party confetti, tinsel streamers, plastic bottles and cigarette butts.

Confetti isn’t paper.

Most of it (especially the metallic kind we spent an hour picking out of the grass blade by blade) is plastic, and once it fragments it’s officially microplastic litter. Municipal guidance is blunt about it: a light rain washes it straight into the storm drain, and since Riverside Park sits right on the Speed River, that’s a short trip from party favor to waterway. Unlike the bottles, you can’t paddle out and grab it back. For what it’s worth, paper confetti exists, biodegrades, and doesn’t require any effort to pick up tiny pieces from the grass.

Over two days we filled two bags with confetti, streamers, cigarette butts, 37 recyclable bottles and other remnants of summer parties. We try to get to the trash before the trash gets to the river. Our most interesting find on this trip was the pineapple-shaped drink cup, complete with straw, looking remarkably cheerful on the riverbank between plastic we fetched from the bottom of the Speed River.