This month River Action is Joining the Plastic Free July campaign that the QC area is helping
initiate, all in efforts to help with excess plastic waste, specifically looking at the Mississippi River. Here
at River Action, we are calling our initiative, Plastic Free Mississippi. The campaign is an incredibly
important topic, and the United Nations Environment Programme has some great statistics that need to
be shared. I think we all need to understand the biggest fact of them all, 75-80% of the trash found in
the Mississippi River is plastic. With the most found plastic items being food wrappers and plastic
bottles. These plastic items and the various others that end up in the river can either litter the waterway
being full size or break down into microplastics. Specifically looking at micro plastics, these miniscule
plastic bits are being consumed by various river avian, aquatic, and surrounding species. The over
utilization of plastic is putting forth so much harm on our river and the surroundings communities,
which is a vast area as the Mississippi River Watershed covers about 1.2 million square miles. That is
why we here at River Action are doing weekly challenges on our social medias that all community
members can be apart of. Our first one launched on July 1 st and can be found on our Facebook,
Instagram, and Twitter. Just search for RiverActionQC, all one word! Our 1 st challenge is encouraging the
community to ‘Take-Out Sustainability”, in efforts to lessen our takeout plastic waste. This can look like
many things, all from using your own silverware, bringing a reusable coffee cup, asking for no extra
sauces, or even refusing a plastic bag. These are just some examples, but we do want to see you
participate in this effort. You can message us or comment on the post a picture of you doing one or all
these actions. At the end of the challenge, we will select participants to be featured on our end of
challenge announcement. Everyday we can decide to take small actions to better help our river,
whether that is lessening our plastic pollution, river clean ups, or even boycotting brands that are found
to be the most polluting in our River. We as a community can make a difference, so join us for Plastic
Free Mississippi.