Junk removal company partners with volunteers on Great American River Clean-Up
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- The Great American River Clean Up gathered volunteers at 20 parkway sites.
- Volunteers collect up to 30,000 pounds of debris and garbage at the one-day event each year.
- Junk King partnered with the parkway foundation by hauling away the collected waste.
Khamsone Manisisaket slipped his hands into a pair of black protective gloves Saturday and climbed into a Junk King truck to carefully pack in garbage collected by volunteers in an annual event to clean up along the American River Parkway in Sacramento.
“This is a beautiful place to be. And it’s heartbreaking just to see this, how we treat Earth sometimes,” said Manisisaket, an assistant general manager for Junk King. “And I like to see that we’re out here cleaning, and we’re working on it. We’re making it better.”
Junk King, a junk removal company with nearly 200 locations in the United States including Sacramento and Roseville, continued its support Saturday for the Great American River Clean-Up.
The one-day event has been organized for the past 25 years by the American River Parkway Foundation, which has recruited 1,200 to 1,400 volunteers each year to collect trash at 20 sites sites along the river.
Nicole Tanimoto, special events manager for the foundation, said volunteers pick up about 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of garbage each year. The volunteers are asked to remove trash, debris and other pollutants from the waterways and surrounding parkland.
“The goal is to always pick up less and less trash, which means there’s less trash out on the parkway,” Tanimoto said as volunteers brought in trash at the Howe Avenue river access collection site. “I’ve seen all sorts, everything from barbecues to mattresses to shopping carts. I’ve seen weight sets, grills and then always just the small things: plates, trash, napkins and bottles.”
Along with picking up trash, the foundation invited volunteers to pull invasive plants, repaint picnic tables and remove unsightly graffiti to conserve the parkway for everyone to enjoy.
There were 1,252 volunteers who participated in the event Saturday, according to the foundation. The volunteers removed 21,512 pounds of trash, and divers and kayakers removed 300 pounds of trash from the river. The foundation said volunteers removed 10,798 invasive plants on Saturday.
Tanimoto said event organizers instruct volunteers to not approach any homeless encampments they might see and to steer clear of those areas.
Junk King deploys its trucks to the clean-up sites to haul away debris collected from the riverbanks. The junk removal company specializes in disposing the collected waste responsibly by ensuring as much as possible is diverted from landfills through recycling and donation.
“We basically recycle or reuse about 60% of what we pick up,” Manisisaket said. “We use different organizations within our community.”
The Junk King trucks spent several hours Saturday driving around to the trash collection sites along the 23-mile length of the parkway to load up before hauling away the garbage.
“We’re passionate about keeping our communities clean and protecting our natural spaces,” Larry Alarcon, general manager of Junk King in Sacramento, said in a news release. “The American River is such an important part of Sacramento’s environment and recreation, and we’re proud to partner with volunteers who are making a real difference.”
The Great American River Clean-Up is the foundation’s largest annual volunteer event, which is held on California Coastal Cleanup Day in collaboration with the California Coastal Commission. The volunteers gather garbage at each of the 20 sites along the American River, from Discovery Park near Interstate 5 to Nimbus Dam near Hazel Avenue in Gold River.
Tanimoto said the foundation organizes a similar cleanup event in April each year, but that event has fewer trash collection sites. She said they recruit volunteers through emails, social media posts and newsletters, but the foundation is well-known for having organized the event for more than two decades.
“The Parkway is truly the jewel of Sacramento,” Julia Cassill, volunteer and engagement manager for the American River Parkway Foundation, said in a news release. “We invite our entire community to get involved in conserving and enjoying it.”
This story was originally published September 20, 2025 at 1:55 PM.
