The LRWP and SEWA volunteers went out to the litter trap in the Green Brook on Saturday, July 26th, 2025, to conduct a litter tally. Huge thanks to our SEWA International Central Jersey youth partners! Thanks to their efforts, we’ll have much better data on how the litter trap keeps our watershed clean. Learn more about the litter trap initiative here. And learn more about the LRWP’s litter tally project with SEWA here. Below, you’ll find Sewa’s Nilesh Bhat describing the litter we picked up and conditions surrounding the litter trap.

Blog post by Nilesh Bhat

On July 26th, Sewa leads checked on the litter trap for the 6th week. The litter trap only collected a few pieces of Styrofoam and some plastic. This was much less compared to other weeks. We moved on to picking up litter that we could see outside the trap. Here, we found a lot of plastic bags, plastic bottles, and other such litter. We also found a discarded appliance that we theorized to be either a wax melter or a humidifier. We also planted some seeds by the support rods holding the litter trap. This was in hopes that the roots could stabilize the ground and mitigate erosion during storms. We had put bug spray on as always, but we were swarmed with mosquitoes regardless. This resulted in one of the leads having a minor allergic reaction. The mosquitoes might have been higher in number this week due to high temperatures exceeding 100ºF and recent storms increasing water levels. It was an interesting week, and we will continue to monitor the trap.