Volunteers Lend a Hand to Clean Shorelines in the District

Earlier this year, Potomac Conservancy caught up with two volunteers from Jones Lang LaSalle who got their hands dirty for clean water! Yurie and Jennifer were among 150 volunteers who came out to Teddy Roosevelt Island and Fletcher's Cove in Washington, DC, to help clean up Potomac shorelines. Collectively volunteers removed 4,350 pounds of shoreline litter along the Potomac. That's right, over 2 tons of trash!

The cleanups at Teddy Roosevelt Island and Fletcher's Cove were part of a larger, regional cleanup coordinated by our friends at the Alice Ferguson Foundation. More than 23,800 volunteers were involved, and at day's end, over one million pounds of trash had been collected!

To find other hands-on opportunities to make a difference for clean water in your local community check out our Events Calendar!

Hear what Yurie and Jennifer had to say about their day of service along the Potomac!

Q. How did you hear about the Potomac River cleanup?
Yurie: Jones Lang LaSalle participated in this event last year. We’re trying to make it an annual event for all our JLL colleagues.

Jennifer: JLL has become very focused on conservation efforts and being environmentally friendly. We encourage almost every building that we manage to go for LEED certification. So this fits perfectly with JLL.

Q. What was the most interesting thing that you found today?
Yurie: There were a lot of broken glasses, beer bottles. Those are the hard ones to pick up. And a really heavy metal guard rail. We all had to team up to carry it.

Jennifer: I found a child’s shovel, which actually helped us dig up a bunch of other stuff. It was a little orange plastic sand castle shovel. We found a big old plastic tub. I think there were five or six of us carrying it.

Q. Did you see any wildlife?
Jennifer: We saw a woodpecker. Lots of ducks. Saw some fish, including some dead ones.

Yurie: And little flowers, which made us really cheery and happy.

Q. Did anything surprise you about being out on the Potomac?
Jennifer: For me, I’m not originally from around here. I’m originally from Kentucky. And I was talking to some of the fishermen around here, and they’re telling me all about how the fish are coming in right now and how it’s almost like the Atlantic version of the salmon that’s coming in for their run. And it was astounding the ecosystems that this river is actually holding up. I wasn’t aware of that before.

Q. Why do you think volunteer service is important for our society and local communities?
Jennifer: We want this experience to be around for the next generation and the generation after that. All the kids here are having fun. That’s what we want for the future.

Yurie: And we understand the importance of giving back to the community.