Back to News

By: MIASF Staff

Date posted: Mar 31, 2022 Thu

For the 45th year, the Annual Broward County Waterway Cleanup, held on Saturday, March 5th, was a massive success! This year’s event returned to its traditional format, taking place on the first Saturday of March at more than 35 site locations across the county. In all, more than 1300 volunteers participated in the event and cleaned up more than 20 tons of trash from our waterways and community. The event, which is Broward’s largest and longest-running environmental event, invites participants to clean up by both land and boat. In all, more than 320 participants cleaned up via a personal watercraft including boats, paddleboards, canoes, and kayaks.

Each year, the event continues to grow while also welcoming back long-time volunteers (some who have even event been participating since the event was established in the 1970s). This year’s event grew to welcome 644 participants who were volunteering for the first-time. Unique items are always sure to be found by our volunteers and this year was no exception. At a cleanup site in Coral Springs, volunteers even found two submerged cars and a boat! The proper authorities were called by the site coordinators to report these finds and make sure all protocols were followed. Some other very cool items cleaned up include a guitar and a very large faux gold chain necklace.

To celebrate the success of our combined efforts and thank our volunteers for the continued dedication, we brought back our Trash Bash, the official Waterway Cleanup after-party. This year’s party was hosted at the Lauderdale Small Boat Club. With food, drinks, raffles, and live music, volunteers ranging in ages from 2 to 87 are invited to come out and celebrate together. The Trash Bash was sponsored by Clean Waterways, LLC. This organization is most well-known for recently working with the City of Fort Lauderdale to use their protein skimmer technology to clean the Himmarshee Canal. The team of Clean Waterways brought their skimmer to the event to provide demonstrations to the volunteers in attendance.

In addition to the Waterway Cleanup, MIASF hosts recycled-art, short story, and essay contests
that awards more than $1,000 in scholarship money to Broward County middle school and highschool students. This year’s scholarship recipients include:
• Essay Contest: $500 – Jonah Basi
• Short-Story Contest: $250 – Alexandra Greenberg
• Recycled-Art Contest: $300 (First Place) – Kyle Lafrance
• Recycled-Art Contest: $200 (Second Place) – Johnaya Genestant
• Recycled-Art Contest: $100 (Third Place) – Brooklyn Ung-Pineiro

Thank you to our volunteers, site coordinators, and sponsors, including our presenting sponsor of the event, the Florida Inland Navigation District, for helping to make this event a success. We look forward to seeing you at next year’s event on Saturday, March 4th , 2023.