Tommy still picks up trash.

He’s out there in his kayak on a 2-mile stretch of the Ohio River downstream from the confluence — at least twice a week.

I met Tom Ross in late August along the Ohio River at the Westhall Street boat launch near Alcosan. He paddled his $180 red kayak to shore with a trash haul: 62 plastic bottles, a couple bags of garbage, two tires, a basketball, a life jacket, a bent aluminum baseball bat and a traffic cone.

“No matter how much I pull out of here, it doesn’t change the game,” he said.

He documents his efforts on his X account:
@tommypicsuptrash.

Generally, Ross can fill his 8½-foot-long kayak with river trash in two hours. He’s been at it for five years.

“Unfortunately, it is not any better, that’s for sure,” Ross told me. “The new trash just keeps flowing in. Every day, it’s a full kayak.”

72 pounds of trash paddled out of Pittsburgh’s Ohio River today including a tall traffic cone dug out of the mud, 2 tires(25 on the season), 2 bags, 62 plastic bottles, an aluminum bat, basketball, and a life jacket.
Our waterways are so abused. pic.twitter.com/3yHlKfHWFc

— TommyPicsUpTrash (@TJRPitt) August 26, 2026

Ross, 52, who coincidentally lives in Ross, was able to retire young. He worked in Pittsburgh for Bank of New York Mellon in accounting and finance. Now, he and his wife, Jacki, live here half the year and spend the other six months in Clearwater, Fla.

As a trail steward with Friends of the Riverfront, Ross is obsessed with cleaning the shorelines of his section of the Ohio River. After every cleanup, he logs his activity and trash removal through that environmental group.

His area of responsibility stretches 2 miles from the Westhall Street launch along the Ohio River, across from Brunot Island.

His 13-year-old kayak is patched together on the bottom with Gorilla tape. Ross loves the rig, because it’s old, cheap and wide — which helps him pack on the trash.

“It’s not exactly what it was built for, but it’s perfect for what I do here,” he said. “This is the one I have always used. I try to come down in the mornings when there’s less boat traffic.”

He maintains the same routine.

He paddles to a shoreline, pulls up, gets out of his kayak and, wearing gloves, starts picking up trash. Sometimes the trash just flows to him.

He gathers as much as he can until the kayak is full.

Then he straps everything down, climbs back in and paddles back.

Upon returning to the boat landing, he hurls the kayak over his shoulder and takes it to his Toyota Prius, which has a roof rack. Allegheny CleanWays, a local anti-dumping nonprofit group, and the Pittsburgh Public Works Department haul some of the trash away as part of an arrangement with Ross.

In his years of river cleanups, he has found deck chairs that he took home and now uses.

He has found Steelers souvenirs, including a football, storage bucket and a Steelers stuffed animal chimpanzee. He has found other items that, after a good scrubbing, were good as new.

And the craziest thing he remembers was a cremation box.

Ross found a sealed box containing cremated remains bearing a man’s name. He tracked down the coroner’s office to help return it.

When he kayaks waterways in Florida, he takes note of their barriers that are set up to catch and corral garbage and prevent it from flowing out to sea. The contraptions are called interceptors. Ross would love to see them on the rivers in and around Pittsburgh.

“It seems like an epic fail that we don’t have interceptors in Pittsburgh,” he said.

Mainly, though, Ross wishes people would stop littering. The enormity of the problem can be overwhelming.

“It’s hard to imagine this much being thrown on the ground and making its way into our waterways,” he said. “Littering has an immense impact on our local waters and streets, and we need to have a conversation and really change some habits. This is not sustainable.”

Ross grew up in Shaler and always had a love of biking and the outdoors. As he grew older and worked in the city, the litter he saw on the Downtown streets got to him. He still doesn’t understand what motivates people to trash their hometown.

I guess the trash isn’t going anywhere, unfortunately.

Neither is Tom Ross.