Our Story

People often ask how we became what Dave likes to say “accidental activists” after being deeply entrenched in corporate jobs in the tech sector. It all began with a simple day on the water in 2013. As the good Miamians that we are, Dave and I (partners in all things) love to paddle the waters of Biscayne Bay, the marine backyard to our home in Miami Beach that is both a National Park and State Aquatic Preserve. Each time we went kayaking, we couldn’t help but notice plastic trash along our paddle route. We started picking it up piece by piece as a regular habit and became very frustrated with how much we were finding and wondering what we could do about it.

One Sunday afternoon, I was watching Dave from our balcony as he paddled back to our condo, and his kayak was TOTALLY loaded down with all kinds of trash. Huge Styrofoam blocks were bungeed down and bags were filled with bottles and cans. My initial thought was, “he is going to need a bigger boat, or a lot more help!” So we started organizing informal group cleanups with friends on waterways and beaches. Each time we would do a cleanup, people would come up to us and ask one of two things. ‘When is the next cleanup’… and ‘Do you know my friend ____ who does cleanups?’ There were so many people who were interested in joining us on cleanups AND there were already pockets of people doing this kind of thing, but no one was connected and there was no centralized place for everyone to find upcoming events. 

If only there was a way for people to find out about local shoreline cleanups on their area that they could join!!! So we did what any techie would do in this situation. We built a website. The idea was simple. We wanted to create a go-to online destination where anyone could find an existing cleanup to join, or organize their own and recruit volunteers. Thus, www.volunteercleanup.org was born. 

What started as a simple solution to connect volunteers on our small 7-mile island with organizers leading cleanups quickly turned into a County-wide movement with 6-10 cleanups happening all over town. As of January 2023, our platform has helped facilitate over 3,000 cleanups, with 30,000 volunteers removing over 600,000 pounds of trash and debris from Miami Dade County beaches and shorelines.

We hope you will join us on our mission by becoming leaders in your community, and we want to help.!. Feel free to Contact Us.