Earth Week Volunteers Pull 1.9 Tons of Litter and Buckthorn From the Riverfront

UW–Porter Falls’ Earth Week wrapped up Friday after five days that drew 714 registered volunteers, the largest turnout since the campus began organizing the week in 2012. About a fifth of volunteers were Porter Falls residents with no university connection, many of them recruited through the Depot Plaza farmers market’s spring preview.

The centerpiece was the Wednesday Earth Day cleanup, which sent crews along 2.4 miles of the Riverfront Trail and the Millrace banks. Volunteers bagged 1,420 pounds of litter and cut and hauled about 2,400 pounds of invasive buckthorn from the slope below Riverside Hall. The strangest find, by consensus: a fully intact 1990s office chair wedged under the Millrace footbridge, which the grounds crew has declined to explain.

The week by the numbers

• 300 native seedlings (red oak, serviceberry, hazelnut) planted as a windbreak at the University Farm
• 18 percent less plate waste at the Forge dining hall than during the same week last year, measured by student volunteers weighing scraps after every meal
• 96 bikes tuned at a free repair stand outside Founders Union
• 41 garden beds prepped at the campus garden for the summer growing season

“Earth Week used to be a lot of tabling. We decided anything we put on the schedule had to leave something measurably different behind — a cleaner bank, a planted row, a smaller trash bin. People show up for that.”

— Mara Ostrowski, sustainability coordinator

The plate-waste audit will be repeated each fall and spring, with results posted alongside the campus’s other sustainability metrics. Buckthorn removal on the Riverside slope continues on the first Saturday of each month through October; the sustainability office provides gloves, loppers and coffee.

Organizers say next year’s week will add a repair café for small appliances and clothing, staffed by apparel and electrical engineering students, after a survey found that the bike stand’s line was the longest anywhere on campus all week.

Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu