Everything You Need to
Plan Your Trashathon
Find step-by-step guides, how-to videos, and answers to every question - all in one place.
Guides & How-Tos
Overview Guide
coming soon
Understand how a Trashathon works, from pledges to reporting.
How to Set Up Your Trashathon
coming soon
A step-by-step guide for organizers.
Cleanup Best Practices
Tips for safety, sustainability, and volunteer engagement.
Video Tutorials
coming soon
Short walkthroughs that show you how to use the Trashathon platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Learn What a Trashathon Is
New here? Welcome! Trashathon is more than a cleanup – it’s a movement that turns community spirit into real-world impact. This section helps you understand how it all works.
A Trashathon is like a walkathon, but instead of walking laps, you clean up litter! Participants collect pledges per pound of trash they remove from parks, beaches, or neighborhoods. It’s a fun way to raise money and protect your community.
Anyone! Schools, sports teams, scout troops, community groups, and nonprofits can all host a Trashathon. All you need is an adult organizer to help oversee the event and a group of volunteers ready to make a difference.
Assemble your team and pick a location and date to do your cleanup. We recommend 4-6 weeks out to give you enough time to collect pledges.
Create your Trashathon account and create your event. Ask friends and family to sponsor you by pledging a donation per pound or per bag of trash you or your team collects. Do your cleanup and log your bags / pounds in the system to close our your trashathon.
Absolutely! We provide a Cleanup 101 guide with tips on safety, what to collect, and how to stay eco-friendly during your cleanup.
You can create and run a Trashathon campaign with no setup or monthly fees. The platform applies a 10% platform fee on donations (optional for donors to cover) plus payment processing fees of 2.9% + $.30 per transaction.
Marine Debris (plastic ocean trash) is one of the top environmental threats the world and our oceans are facing. Most ocean trash starts on land — from street litter, storm drains, or overflowing bins. It harms wildlife, damages tourism, and can even enter our food chain. By cleaning up and reducing single-use plastics, you’re part of the solution. In addition, the experience will likely provides an eye opening experience that demonstrates the overwhelming amount of trash, and helps us start thinking about how we can be part of the solution.
We hope the lessons learned are 1) Never litter, and 2) Reduce and refuse single-use plastics. Some easy things we can all do include: carry a reusable bottle or bag, opt for metal or paper solutions and make sure to properly recycle them, ‘skip the straw’ at restaraunts by telling your server ‘No plastic straw please, I am protecting the turtles’. Small daily actions add up to big change!
You don’t have to organize your own Trashathon to make a difference — there are free public cleanups happening every week that you can join!
Go to VolunteerCleanup.org.
Use the Find a Cleanup search box on the homepage.
Enter your zip code or city, then set your search radius to see cleanups nearby.
You can also filter by:
Date (today, this weekend, or future dates)
Organizer name
Type of cleanup (beach, park, waterway, or neighborhood)
Each event page will show the meeting location, start time, and what to bring (like gloves, water bottles, or sunscreen). Some events require registration or waivers, so read the details carefully.
Plan Your Event
A great Trashathon starts with great planning. From choosing your cleanup spot to rallying your volunteers, here’s everything you need to make it smooth.
Anywhere! A beach, park, neighborhood street, hiking trail – any public space that needs a little love.
Note: Some locations will require permission or a permit in advance. Check with the owner of the location (ie, municipality, park staff, etc).
As organizers, we recommend:
reusable gloves (look for packs of ‘nitrile covered work gloves’ at your local hardware store)
trash bags or buckets (get reusable buckets for free from your local restaurant)
grabbers/pickers if you have them (pickers are optional)
water in water coolers
No single-use plastic as we are trying to remove waste from the environment – not add to it!
For volunteers, closed-toe shoes, reusable water bottle, and sunscreen are important!
Yes! Teams are encouraged – more people = more trash collected and more funds raised! You can join as a group of friends, coworkers, a school club, or even a family crew.
Share the participant registration link (provided by your campaign). Participants sign up, get their own pledge page, and can begin collecting support.
After you have created an account and are at your main organizer dashboard dashboard, go to ‘New Campaign’, name your event, upload branding, set dates, enable pledge settings (per-pound or flat donation), invite participants, then publish.
Use a simple luggage scale or a bathroom scale. Weigh each bag of trash and add up your total. Be sure to post photos to show your results and celebrate your effort!
Safety first! You can reschedule your cleanup or encourage participants to do solo cleanups that weekend and report their totals.
Fundraise & Build Support
Trashathons raise awareness and funds – for your cause. Here, you’ll gain a basic understanding of how fundraising works.
You’ll get your own fundraising page to share with friends, family, coworkers – anyone who might want to support your efforts. People can donate a flat amount or pledge per bag. After your cleanup, you’ll report how many pounds your group collected, and the platform automatically calculates what each donor owes
Start with people you know — family, friends, neighbors, and local businesses. Tell them what your group is raising money for and how every dollar helps remove real trash from the environment. You can share your fundraising link by text, email, or social media. You can download our ‘Top Tips for Fundraising” PDF above.
Donors can pledge an amount per pound of trash collected, or make a flat donation. They can also set a maximum amount so there are no surprises if you collect a lot more trash than you expected. You can also allow your donors to cover the platform fee. If a business issues you a check, you can log that as an ‘offline donation’. No platform fees apply for offline donations.
Yes. When configuring pledge options, you can allow donors to enter a cap so their total won’t exceed it, even if you collect a lot more trash than you expected. We encourage you to use this feature.
Once the event is finalized, the system calculates donation amounts (pledge * pounds collected, up to cap), charges each donor’s card, and sends receipts.
After the Event
This section helps you wrap things up smoothly and thank your team.
After participants submit their trash totals, you, as organizer, must review and confirm them. Once finalized, donors are charged and the campaign closes.
Use a simple luggage scale or a bathroom scale. Weigh each bag of trash and add up your total. Be sure to post photos to show your results and celebrate your effort!
You’ll get access to a participant dashboard where you can log how many bags you collected, upload a photo, and see your fundraising progress.
In your dashboard under Reports, you can see total funds raised, number of donors, participant/team performance, and platform fees. Exportable as CSV.
Yes, in the campaign’s Supporters or Participants tab, select desired records and use the built-in email tool to send updates or thank-you messages.
Troubleshooting & Support
Tech issue? Something not working as expected? We’re here to help you get back on track in no time.
Yes, participants can add a short bio, photo, and personal message to their pledge page, within the branding framework you provide.
The system will flag the failed charge. You’ll need to reach out to the donor to update payment info or retry manually.
Contact us at support@trashathon.org or by filling out the Contact Us form.
Refunds must be handled via the payment processor (Stripe, etc.). Within Trashathon, you can mark the donor as refunded and document the reason.
Can’t Find What You’re Looking For?
Reach out - our team is here to help with setup or troubleshooting.