Porta-potty to Lime scooters: Pounds of trash found in Denver lakes

DENVER ( KDVR ) — Denver Parks and Recreation spends countless hours pulling trash out of lakes in the city, this includes hundreds of pounds of trash ranging from a water bottle left behind after a picnic to a porta-potty thrown into a lake.

When it comes to picking up trash at park lakes, Stephanie Figueroa with Denver Parks and Recreation said a usual day’s work of monitoring and picking up trash can lead to 50-100 pounds of litter collected.

If it’s an entire lake cleanup, it’s sometimes as much as 500 pounds.

“Our teams spend hundreds of hours picking up trash from our waterways including staff and volunteers,” said Figueroa.

While some trash comes from people littering in the parks, the litter is coming from everywhere, according to Figueroa. This is because most of the Denver lakes are stormwater feeds.

“A lot of trash off the streets and surrounding landscapes end up in our lakes,” said Figueroa.

Figueroa said a lot of the trash found in the lakes is plastics, like water bottles, straws and plastic bags. A lot of times, this is from people who visit the lake for a picnic or to fish and leave their trash behind, which ends up blowing into the lake.

However, sometimes bigger – and stranger litter – are thrown into the lakes, like the occasional Lime scooter, trash barrel and even a porta-potty.

Parks and recreation hold cleanup events as well as other projects like the Adopt-A-Spot Program , where volunteers work to keep one space of the city clean. Parks and rec also suggest individual cleanup efforts, like picking up trash on your run or finding a neighborhood or park nearby.

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