From the Great Lakes to the Coast: Meet Our Freshwater Conservation Partners

Earlier this month we introduced you to the nine beachgoods.com giving partners working on ocean conservation. Now, as we approach World Lake Day on August 27, we're following the water inland: to the lakes, ponds, rivers, streams and then estuaries where much of it starts before it reaches the coast / ocean.

beachgoods.com is a certified 1% for the Planet member, and freshwater conservation gets just as much of that commitment as ocean work does. Here's where that support goes, traced the way water actually moves: lake to river to coast.

Where Freshwater Starts: The Great Lakes

The Great Lakes hold about one-fifth of the world's surface freshwater, which makes the Alliance for the Great Lakes' job enormous by definition. The organization runs Adopt-a-Beach, a volunteer cleanup and monitoring program that's been collecting shoreline litter data since 1991, longer than any other citizen-science dataset on this list. A 2024 analysis of that 20-plus years of data found that 86% of the litter collected on Great Lakes beaches is partially or fully plastic, and 40% of it is small enough to classify as "tiny trash," under an inch across. That kind of long-running, hands-on dataset is exactly why the Alliance is one of our partners.

Where Freshwater Moves: America's Rivers

Once water leaves a lake, American Rivers is often the organization watching what happens to it next. Each year, the group publishes America's Most Endangered Rivers, a report now in its 41st year that carries real weight with lawmakers. The 2026 edition named the Potomac River the most endangered river in the country, driven by data-center expansion and pollution, with PFAS contamination on the Lumber River and mining threats to the Boundary Waters, Rogue, and Chilkat rivers also flagged. It's advocacy at a national scale, spanning dozens of river systems rather than one region.

Inland Ocean Coalition

Not everyone who cares about ocean health lives anywhere near a coast, and that's exactly the gap the Inland Ocean Coalition exists to close. Based in landlocked Boulder, Colorado, the organization runs a free, five-week Inland Ocean Ambassador training program twice a year. It's trained over 250 Ambassadors from 38 U.S. states and 38 countries so far, people who go on to run cleanups, join call-in campaigns, and make the case that what happens hundreds of miles from an ocean still ends up in it eventually.

Where Rivers Meet the Sea: Estuaries

Estuaries are the last stop before fresh water becomes ocean water, and they're disappearing fast. Restore America's Estuaries reports that U.S. coastal wetlands have lost over half their historical extent in the last 200 years. The organization's current focus treats that loss as a climate issue as much as a habitat one: its Blue Carbon Action Plan pushes the carbon-storage value of salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrass into federal climate policy, and it runs cleanup and restoration grants, typically $1,000 to $4,000, through its Caring for Our Coast program. In September 2026, it's hosting the Coastal & Estuarine Summit in San Francisco, one of the field's biggest annual gatherings.

Our Own Small Piece of This

Four organizations, four different points along the same path water takes from a lake to the ocean. Here's the smallest piece we add to that path ourselves.

Our Clean Water Fund 18 oz Black Tempercraft Water Bottle isn't a specially manufactured "eco" product. It started as a factory misprint, the kind of item that would normally get thrown out over a labeling error, then got rescued and rebranded instead of discarded. Seventy-five percent of what you pay for one goes directly to Clean Water Fund initiatives. It's vacuum-insulated stainless steel, keeps drinks cold up to 24 hours, and comes with a sports lid. A small, practical way to put money toward clean water every time you fill it up.

The Bottom Line

Water doesn't recognize the line where a lake ends and a river begins, or where a river ends and the ocean begins. Neither does our 1% for the Planet commitment. These four partners, plus the nine we introduced earlier this month, cover the whole path: from the Great Lakes down to the reefs.

Read the ocean half of this story: Ocean Conservation, Education & Science Nonprofits: Meet the Partners We Support.