NORTHAMPTON — The tally was typical for a two-hour cleanup “party” early Friday morning along the Connecticut River — a couch, window shades, 25 pounds of nails and part of a car bumper were just some of the items discarded along the riverbank not far from the Meadows farmland.

“The craziest thing is the fact that people leave their stuff behind,” said Victoria Quill, a volunteer with the Connecticut River Conservancy who led the group of 15 participants taking part in the CRC’s 28th Source to Sea Cleanup.

But the crazier part may be how much stuff people leave behind, as for the past 28 years the Source to Sea cleanup has collected an 1,100-ton stockpile of litter, including 14,000 tires and 144,000 beverage containers.

This group was just one of dozens of cleanup crews who fanned out along the 410-mile, four-state stretch of the Connecticut River, from central Vermont in the north to the river’s mouth in Essex, Connecticut, in the south, to participate in the annual event designed to make the “water cleaner, the river banks safer and the wildlife happier.” The weekend is part of the conservancy’s larger goal to promote the health and restoration of waterways by planting native trees, restoring floodplain forests and filtering pollution of local waterways.

Just south of Mitch’s Marina, in the shadow of the summit house on the Northampton side of Mount Holyoke, the group retrieved 400 pounds of trash in just under two hours. Collected in bags and buckets and sorted by volunteers, the trash was later biked away by Pedal People, which took a departure from their normal task of being a waste pickup service in Northampton and Easthampton.

“Trash is ugly and could harm our wildlife and environment. I’m so proud of our team of volunteers for their hard work today,” said Quill.

Utilizing their bike-fueled garbage and recycling trailers, employees of Pedal People hauled away most of the debris collected along the shores in under three hours, with larger pieces being taken away in a pickup truck by Huxley and Michael Filas.

Samantha Grossman of Pedal People explained the emission-free waste management company decided that instead of making monetary donations, Pedal People would donate time to local community service projects by essentially paying their employees to do community service – and Grossman signed up for this project.

“We haul trash for a living so this seemed like a good fit,” said Grossman, who after the cleanup biked the trash 3 miles to the dump with a co-worker.

Quill encourages people to “make an impact,” which longtime participant Christina Peterson says is possible, since over the past 20 intermittent years of her volunteering for the Source to Sea cleanup, she has seen positive trends.

She said that not only are the shores cleaner, but the number of passionate volunteers has grown.

“While there are less couches and mattresses than there had been, there are more beer cans and beverage containers,” said the Florence resident, explaining that over time the trash has become smaller in scale, with mostly beverage bottles and cans being collected. Last year, she experienced what to her had been the most “mind-blowing” litter over the years – namely piles of syringes and aluminum foil.

Peterson, a rowing enthusiast who is passionate about the preservation of water bodies, encouraged her husband Peter Rayton to come along for his first time, who like many volunteers enjoyed the crisp autumn morning that turned warm and sunny. He said that as a person “lucky enough to live here and enjoy the water’s beauty,” he thinks he can afford to spend a few hours maintaining that gift.

Up north in Franklin County, where the Source to Sea event has long been held in conjunction with the Green River Cleanup, at least 250 volunteers converged to offer a helping hand across 30 sites, Green River Cleanup organizer David Boles said Saturday.

Doughnuts, lunch, water and coffee were provided to volunteers and a band was present to entertain. The parking lot was filled with vehicles as mounds of debris quickly piled up and some people sorted recyclables like bottles and cans. Some volunteers carted over trash they found along the nearby bicycle path.

The swimming area also consisted of a station where people could construct their own reusable shopping bags, as plastic ones are bad for the environment. 

“It picks up as the people come back from picking up their trash,” Peg Hall said. “It’s a fun job.”

She mentioned the most challenging aspect was figuring out which material to use to make bags.

“The more we looked into it, the more we realized that the right answer is to make them out of anything that already exists,” she said. “Because if you make them out of … even organic cotton, that uses a lot of water. We’re making them out of something that otherwise would have been trashed.”

Don Plante, a first-timer from Gill, said he has for years read about the cleanup in newspapers and thought it was time to pitch in.

“I just felt I needed to do something to help out,” he said. “I just went out and found a site and signed up.”

According to the Connecticut River Conservancy’s website, last year’s Source to Sea Cleanup was comprised of 1,200 volunteer collecting 34 tons of trash and 9,200 beverage containers.

Reporter Domenic Poli contributed to this report. Samuel Gelinas can be reached at sgelinas@gazettenet.com.