Have You Seen Litter Critters in Your Neighborhood?

Every Piece Inspires Change (E.p.i.c.)

Trash in our creeks, rivers, and oceans is a major pollutant of concern for our environment. As our society has grown to utilize more single use plastics such as water bottles, food packaging, grocery bags, etc., we all must do our part to take simple actions which have big impacts in limiting these items from entering our waterways and negatively impacting wildlife which inhabit them.

Within the City of Santa Rosa, CA on average approximately 1,100 cubic feet (~47 full garbage trucks) of trash is removed from our creeks each year! Compounded across approximately 482 cities statewide, the collective impact of trash on our environment is significant.

Trash and other pollutants are easily transported from streets to creeks by entering the storm drain system through wind or flowing into it when it rains. A problem as big as trash in our creeks needs everyone to step in to find the solution. We welcome you to take that first step towards inspiring change. We invite you to find purpose. We invite you to make an impact.

We invite you to be E.P.I.C!

The Campaign

Streets to Creeks is implementing a trash campaign in your community to help build awareness, increase public perception, and remove barriers in order to promote clean, trash free communities.

Building awareness through outreach and community involvement has been a proven method for decreasing trash in communities. You may see images of creek critters in your City reminding you that streets are connected to creeks. And our creeks are their home! Each critter is holding a piece of refuse identified by a specific color: Blue represents recycling, Green represents compostables, and Pink represents trash!

Public perception is a major part of a trash free community. Studies have shown when an area is clean and litter free, people are less likely to exhibit behaviors which lead to increase trash on streets. Adding additional street sweeping days and focusing community cleanups in areas with known high trash generation rates will be a major focus of the campaign.

Removing barriers to put trash in its place is another major step towards a clean community. Something as simple as providing more trash or recycling receptacles for the community can help decrease trash on streets.