St. Louis, MO (KSDK) - Many of us drive over it every day and never give it a thought, but the Missouri River is really a vital part of the local environment.
Thanks to one non-profit, it's much cleaner than it was earlier this year.
Unfortunately, the group Missouri River Relief found plenty of trash -- 36 tons of it.
After months of volunteer clean-up events, this is what the collected trash looks like Tuesday. Tires, street signs, plastic bottles, and scrap metal -- among other things.
The trash was loaded onto a barge as it was collected along the river and it was put into bins. Volunteers said it's easy to lose track of how far trash can travel -- and how much damage it can do.
"It doesn't really wash away. It just goes downstream to the next community, so we're getting the upstream trash here," said Jeff Barrow, Missouri River Relief. "It eventually goes to the ocean where it's collecting in the center of these giant circular accumulations of plastic, which is causing a lot of problems for wildlife."
This is the tenth year volunteers have done a clean-up like this on the Missouri River. Since they started working on the river, they've collected more than a million pounds of debris. The group's strangest find in all these years? An upright piano.
KSDK