Home / Houston News / Officials urge action after hundreds of pounds of trash pulled from Houston’s Buffalo Bayou weekly

Officials urge action after hundreds of pounds of trash pulled from Houston’s Buffalo Bayou weekly

Houston, you know better.

According to officials with the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, hundreds of bags of trash and waste are pulled from the bayou each week – and this week was no exception.

Buffalo Bayou looks more like a sea of trash than one of Houston’s iconic waterways in an Instagram video the partnership shared Monday. Officials used the video to urge Houstonians to be more friendly to the environment and to issue an important reminder

“How did all of this trash get here? From roadways, highways, storm drains and littering,” partnership officials said in the post.

Officials said they can fill about about 60 cubic yards, or 700 to 900 garbage bags with trash from the bayou every week. The most common forms of trash found in the bayou are plastic bottles, Styrofoam and plastic bags, according to Trudi Smith, director of PR and Events for the Buffalo Bayou Partnership.

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“Any trash that is not in a trash receptacle will flow into a storm drain during a rain, [then] flow through the outfalls that pour into our bayous,” Smith said. “Since most of our bayous flow into Buffalo Bayou, this historic waterway is a collection area for the majority of floatable trash.”

The shocking video is something the partnership’s Clean & Green team (the crew responsible for clearing out the trash) comes across every week. The Clean & Green program is a bayou clean-up initiative that utilizes a specially-designed vacuum boat and community service workers to remove trash and debris from the waterway, Smith said. Because trash has to be separated by plastic, Smith said the clean-up can be “a long and tedious process.”

The recent, frequent heavy rain events Houston has experienced can lead to an increase in the amount of trash seen in the bayou, Smith said.

The partnership is urging Houstonians to do their part in keeping the waterway clean by reducing single-use plastics, disposing of trash properly and picking up trash. The partnership is also urging residents to take part in the global initiative #PlasticFreeJuly, which aims to dramatically reduce plastic use and improve recycling worldwide.

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