YORK, Penn. – How long does it take to remove 26,400 pieces of trash from the Susquehanna River?
Pennsylvanian John Naylor found out. One boatload at a time.
It took him six years, one month and eight days. The 58-year-old reached his goal on March 19.
Every piece of trash added up. From flip flops to patio furniture, tires, traffic cones and bumpers, he found just about everything in the river.
“You name it − it’s in there,” said Naylor who lives in York, about 25 miles south of Harrisburg, the state capital. “The scariest things are baby dolls − they’re not pretty anymore. But the worst things to me personally are motor oil and the sheer volume of single-use plastic bottles.”
One man’s trash
Naylor’s personal campaign to clean up the river began innocently enough in 2017, when a friend challenged him to stop complaining about trash in the river and do something about it.
His original goal was to clean 1,000 pieces of litter from the Susquehanna.
“I hammered that,” he said, hitting the goal in three months. So, he set his sights higher − at 26,400 −a number he chose because, in his day job at Manchester’s Starbucks Roasting Plant, there are 26,400 water bottles in one truckload.
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Naylor chipped away at that goal with boatloads of trash − typically 100 to 300 pieces per haul − in one of his hand-paddled canoes or his small, motorized aluminum jon boat, christened “Susquehanna Retriever” on the side.
Focusing a few miles north and south of the Codorus Creek’s confluence with the Susquehanna, Naylor headed out on the river several times a week. It might sound like a solitary activity, but he said nature kept him company — eagles, ospreys, herons and turtles on logs.
Naylor made a lot of friendly human connections as well.
“When I’m out there picking, people are always waving, stopping to have conversations − and that’s a big part of it,”…
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