ABOUT USThe Eastern Shore's Voice for Healthy WaterwaysOur mission: ShoreRivers protects and restores Eastern Shore waterways through science-based advocacy, restoration, and education.
Our offices themselves are not a destination for students; however, we are facilitators for student learning, in-school sustainability, and community building. We reach over 2,500 students through lessons and field trips to learn about watershed science and local ecology. In addition to this, ShoreRivers advocates for our waterways on the local, state, and federal level to ensure that laws and regulations reflect what is best for the health of Eastern Shore waterways. Our Riverkeepers regularly patrol our waterways - monitoring river health, identifying pollution hot spots, and looking for illegal pollution sources. When necessary we take legal action to curtail polluters. We run a robust citizen-science program, where our scores of volunteers test water quality, monitor Submerged Aquatic Vegetation (SAV) beds, and collect water samples for bacteria testing. While we are not able to host large groups of students at our small office locations, we help every student we work with understand that our full watersheds are our classrooms. |
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Our Green Culture
ShoreRivers is an environmental non-profit organization that strives for healthy waterways across Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Our team works to protect and restore Eastern Shore waterways through education, advocacy and restoration. Our main office is located in Easton, Maryland and we strive to meet green standards that are vital to our organization, community, and environment. Because we are an environmental nonprofit, we prioritizing having a strong green culture so that we can better advance our mission and serve as a model for our community. As detailed in Objective 1.5, we do our best to put in place the technology, resources, and behavior patterns necessary to be green. Among the staples of our office green culture are our single-use plastic ban, our dual-stream recycling program, our dedication to reusing scrap paper before it is recycling, and our company culture of bringing lunch from home in reusable containers. We additionally make use of automatic lights, natural lighting, a water bottle refilling station, and carpooling at every possible opportunity to be more energy efficient.
Healthy, fishable, swimmable waterways will not be possible without the next generation of clean water enthusiasts. ShoreRivers strives to encourage in students an appreciation for Eastern Shore rivers and a dedication to making a difference. Our robust environmental education program serves over 2,500 3rd grade and high school biology students every year in Dorchester, Talbot, Queen Anne’s, and Kent county schools. We provide students with a Meaningful Watershed Education Experience (MWEE), a Maryland State graduation requirement, in which classes investigate local water quality. ShoreRivers leads classroom lessons, field experiences, community-focused action projects, and teacher professional development, all towards raising the next generation of environmental stewards. Our focus on generational power is a key element of our green culture, and we are constantly working to make important environmental concepts understandable and exciting for the next generation. While we are not an organization that is capable of hosting large-scale student visits to our own facilities, we are facilitators and guides, going into the classroom and bringing the classroom outside to multiple sites, especially the University of Maryland Horn Point Laboratory.
We pride ourselves in our involvement in our community because we work for the betterment of their waterways to preserve not only natural resources and ecological beauty but also culture and heritage. Through our outreach efforts, our report cards, newsletters, news feed, videos, and technical documents, we help community members to learn about the most recent water quality trends, upcoming volunteer opportunities, events, local school action project initiatives and much more. Everyone deserves to know about the health of their environment, from the shoreline to the schoolyard, and ShoreRivers aims to make that possible.
Healthy, fishable, swimmable waterways will not be possible without the next generation of clean water enthusiasts. ShoreRivers strives to encourage in students an appreciation for Eastern Shore rivers and a dedication to making a difference. Our robust environmental education program serves over 2,500 3rd grade and high school biology students every year in Dorchester, Talbot, Queen Anne’s, and Kent county schools. We provide students with a Meaningful Watershed Education Experience (MWEE), a Maryland State graduation requirement, in which classes investigate local water quality. ShoreRivers leads classroom lessons, field experiences, community-focused action projects, and teacher professional development, all towards raising the next generation of environmental stewards. Our focus on generational power is a key element of our green culture, and we are constantly working to make important environmental concepts understandable and exciting for the next generation. While we are not an organization that is capable of hosting large-scale student visits to our own facilities, we are facilitators and guides, going into the classroom and bringing the classroom outside to multiple sites, especially the University of Maryland Horn Point Laboratory.
We pride ourselves in our involvement in our community because we work for the betterment of their waterways to preserve not only natural resources and ecological beauty but also culture and heritage. Through our outreach efforts, our report cards, newsletters, news feed, videos, and technical documents, we help community members to learn about the most recent water quality trends, upcoming volunteer opportunities, events, local school action project initiatives and much more. Everyone deserves to know about the health of their environment, from the shoreline to the schoolyard, and ShoreRivers aims to make that possible.
Organization-Wide Environmental Behavioral Changes
We believe in practicing what we preach. We may be environmental advocates, educators, and restorationists, but we can always do better for our planet and ourselves. As such, since the merger of our three legacy organizations in 2018, ShoreRivers has worked hard to implement organization-wide, standard environmental practices. As explained above and in Objective 1.5, since our merger, we have moved to offices with more sustainable features, including automatic lights, reusable water bottle filling stations, and larger windows for natural lighting. We also practice recycling by resin code, prioritize reusing any tool or item possible, including bags and used paper, and we have instituted a single-use plastic ban across our offices.