Ohio River: Earth to Oceans

Join us this Earth Day, April 22nd, through World Ocean's Day, June 8th, to fight plastic pollution along the Ohio River with science.

More information

The Ohio River flows 981 miles through six states, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois. There, the Ohio meets the Mississippi River, eventually connecting it to the Gulf of Mexico. We both rely on and impact the river. More than 25 million people live in the Ohio River Basin and over five million people use on the river as their source of drinking water. But the river is threatened by plastic pollution, when everyday items like plastic bottles and food wrappers enter the waterway from our communities. We need your help to characterize plastic pollution along the Ohio River. Debris Tracker is a free, easy-to-use mobile app that unites the power of technology and citizen science to flight plastic and other types of pollution that harm our environment. Every day, dedicated educational, non-profit, and scientific organizations and passionate citizen scientists from all around the world record data on inland and marine debris. You can join us and start tracking today!

Priority Survey Sites Map

Click the link here Ohio River: Earth to Oceans Survey Map to access the survey maps for Stark County, OH; Cincinnati, OH; Louisville, KY; and Cairo, IL. Priority sites for transects are shown in orange, but you can collect data anywhere along the Ohio River Basin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Select the United States Rivers list under Organizations on the Debris Tracker app.

Data collected anywhere along the Ohio River Basin is valuable, but our key communities are Stark County, OH; Cincinnati, OH; Louisville, KY; and Cairo, IL. Within these key communities, our team has stratified surveying sites based on population and income. Priority sites are shown in orange on the survey maps here: Ohio River: Earth to Oceans Survey Map.

Once you arrive at your selected square, find a safe place where you can collect data along a roadside, sidewalk, or other walkable area where litter often accumulates. For example, this might be a pathway on the side of a road, between a roadway and sidewalk, or along a walkway in the park. If there’s not a safe space within the orange square, move to a nearby area to collect data.

Once you pick your site, from the edge of the pathway, visually estimate 1 m (about 3 ft) in width covering the area where litter accumulates. This is about the length from the center of your chest to the fingertips of your outstretched arm. Use Debris Tracker to record all litter items present in your 1 m wide transect. Track data for a minimum of 20 minutes in your selected location.

We’re asking volunteers to collect data in the identified areas - rather than only on the riverbank - so we can capture upstream, active litter input. This will provide us a comprehensive look at what kinds of items are ending up on the ground from activities close to the source.

It’s very valuable to clean up litter in the environment. Picking up litter upstream can prevent it from traveling downriver and entering the ocean, preventing negative ecosystem impacts along the way. Collecting data on what you clean up makes your efforts more powerful by providing information that can help us understand what is ending up in the environment and inspire solutions of what we can do about it. You do not have to conduct a cleanup to use Debris Tracker.

For the Ohio River plastic pollution report that will be generated with this data, you can collect data anytime between Earth Day on April 22nd, 2022, and World Ocean’s Day on June 8th, 2022. However, you can continue to use the app as long as you'd like!