Colorado woman spends vacation crisscrossing the U.S., picking up trash

A person throws away garbage.
(Image credit: iStock)

When Stefani Shamrowicz decided to go on a "spontaneous road trip" across the United States, it wasn't just so she could visit family and friends — she also wanted to pick up trash along the way.

Shamrowicz, 24, lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, and got the idea to go on litter patrol after Earth Day, when she had a month off of work. During her journey, Shamrowicz picked up more than 125 bags of trash, containing over 1,600 gallons of garbage. She estimates that 80 percent of the trash she picked up was plastic bottles, with face masks also a common sight.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.