Thames River Watch, run by environmental charity Thames21, is a ‘citizen science’ project that involves community volunteers from across London helping to improve the public’s understanding of the health of the Thames and the challenges it faces.
Funded by Tideway since 2014 and by Tideway and Thames Water from July 2021 to June 2024, the programme has engaged communities up and down the river who have collected and counted thousands of single use plastic bottles and wet wipes. The programme’s data is put into a Live Litter Map which shows what has been collected, including breakdowns of sewage-derived litter.
As well as collecting vital data, the three years between 2021 and 2024 focused on engaging communities in west and east London who were less familiar with the river or may have felt it was not accessible to them. You can read a report about the impact of these activities in this report.