Elizabeth River Project

Using plastic to clean up plastic never felt right.
Last month at Paradise Creek Nature Park, we finally changed that.

For the first time ever, our volunteers removed 200 pounds of plastic and Styrofoam from the marsh without creating a single piece of new plastic waste. No plastic bags. No disposable supplies. Just determination, grabbers, and a fleet of hardware‑store buckets.

The star of the day? The now‑legendary “Traboggan”—a trash toboggan engineered by volunteers to haul debris up the steep marsh banks. It worked so well that this zero‑plastic system is officially our new standard, supported by a dedicated on‑site dumpster thanks to Portsmouth Parks & Recreation.

This is what real stewardship looks like—rethinking habits, protecting marshes, and proving that cleanup can be part of the solution, not part of the problem.