National CleanUp Day is celebrated annually in the United States on the third Saturday of September. It promotes both organized and individual cleanup events and volunteering to keep the outdoors clean. The inaugural National CleanUp Day was held in 2017 and had more than 225,000 volunteers. The 2018 event had over 1,500,000 volunteers, 14 million pounds of waste collected, and was held in conjunction with the inaugural World CleanUp Day. The 2019 cleanup had almost 2,000,000 volunteers, 18 million pounds of waste collected. The US event is coordinated with World CleanUp Day and saw a combined 20 million volunteers in 170 countries which is the largest, single day global volunteer event. National CleanUp Day partners include Earth Day, Keep America Beautiful, World Cleanup Day, Waterkeeper Alliance, National Parks Conservation Association, Junior Chamber International, Granite Gear, Fjallraven, and Clean Trails. In April 2019, Earth Day partnered with National CleanUp Day and Keep America Beautiful for the inaugural Earth Day CleanUp and had over 500,000 volunteers working to clean uptrash and litter nationally. In 2020, the Great Global CleanUp by Earth Day was originally planned to include thousands of large group cleanups but the COVID-19 pandemic caused cancellation of most group events. Instead, Earth Day and presenting partners World CleanUp Day, National CleanUp Day and Keep America Beautiful organized individual activities like Plogging and the TrashTag Challenge. CleanUp events are held throughout the month of September and include National Public Lands Day. In 2020, National CleanUp Day introduced the Tailored CleanUp@ program for businesses and cities. The program is free and available to any participating business, land manager, government entity or nonprofit. In addition to the Third Saturday in September, the signup and map pages may be used for any cleanup worldwide on any date. National CleanUp Day was founded by Bill Willoughby and Steve Jewett.
