One river — the Motagua — carries an estimated 20 million kilograms of plastic toward the Caribbean Sea every year. We stop it at the source, and we put local people to work doing it.
The Motagua River runs nearly 500 kilometers from the highlands of Guatemala to the Gulf of Honduras, gathering the waste of entire cities along the way. Together with its Las Vacas tributary, it delivers an estimated 20 million kilograms of plastic a year into the Caribbean — onto the reefs, fisheries, and beaches that coastal families depend on.
Most ocean cleanups chase plastic after it has already scattered across the sea. We work the river. Interception at the source — barriers, collection crews, and community waste programs — stops plastic while it is still in one place, still cheap to catch, and still out of the food chain.
Our pilot project starts here: local crews, paid fairly, intercepting waste on the Motagua and its tributaries — green jobs that keep families together in Central America instead of forcing dangerous migration in search of work. Every kilogram is mapped, contained, collected, weighed, recorded, and reported.
Removing plastic from the open ocean costs a fortune and catches a fraction. Stopping it in the river — where it starts — is the only math that ever catches up.
Our crews are local residents earning real wages in green jobs. A cleaner river, a fed family, and a reason to stay home — one budget buys all three.
Cleanup is step one. Working with engineer Greg Randall, the collected waste is destined for conversion into diesel fuel and electricity — a permanent answer for Central America's garbage, not an endless cleanup.
Our people are working now, in the communities that need it most. Five years of planning, built with the communities who live on these shores — not dropped on them.
In the Garifuna community of La Ensenada, we work directly with local leaders — the people in this photo. Our beach cleanup, education day, and children's party there were funded personally by our founder, who put more than $7,000 of his own money into a single day of work and celebration for the community. That is the model everywhere we go: local leadership, local crews, local pride.
In Triunfo de la Cruz, another Garifuna community on Honduras' north coast, our crews clear debris street by street — wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow, truckload by truckload — before the rains can wash it into the sea. Every load hauled out is plastic that never reaches a reef, a fishing ground, or a child's beach.
In Colonia Ronaldo Carcamo, one of the most impoverished communities we serve, we have acquired a community kitchen and are converting a neighboring building at the base of the mountain into a medicine distribution point — food and basic medicine, including treatment for parasites and infection, for families left homeless by hurricanes, families in poverty, and hungry children.
Poverty hits animals first and hardest. We provide food, shelter, and treatment for the street dogs of Honduras, working with local veterinarians at a fraction of U.S. costs, so small donations save whole lives. The big dog in this photo is Puppy, rescued off the street by our founder; the little black-and-white puppy in his arms is Baxter. That is the promise behind our no-kill work: every rescue gets to grow up loved.
“We are a no-kill operation working with the best vets in the area at less than a quarter of the cost of the United States.” — Hands for Honduras, Animal Welfare Initiative
Every gift to Hands for Honduras can be designated to the work that moves you most. Every designation is honored.
The flagship. River interception crews and barriers stopping an estimated 20 million kilograms of plastic a year at the source.
Paid local crews restoring the beaches of La Ensenada and Triunfo de la Cruz — and the Garifuna communities who call them home.
Clean water for communities in drastic need — alongside the community kitchen and medicine building in Colonia Ronaldo Carcamo.
A no-kill commitment to Honduras' street animals and the marine life of the Caribbean — food, shelter, medicine, and second chances.
The Motagua's garbage has a source, a route, and — now — a road map. Our pilot starts in the small riverside communities and finishes in the capital, so every donor sees what we are reaching for.
≈5 million pounds of garbage a day — our founder's estimate for the greater capital, and the records back it up (see below).
The tributary that drains the capital. Every rain washes the city's waste down this channel toward the Motagua.
~500 km east past 90+ riverside communities — El Progreso, Zacapa, Gualán, Puerto Barrios among them — gathering waste the whole way.
An estimated 20 million kg of plastic a year reaches the Gulf of Honduras (The Ocean Cleanup) — onto reefs, fisheries, and the beaches of the poor.
Step zero is an atlas: overhead imagery and the name of every community along the Las Vacas and the Motagua — more than ninety, in Guatemala and Honduras. One campaign reaches them all — schools, churches, radio, and local leaders teaching why the river is not a dump and where waste goes instead. Nothing else holds without it.
Every community gets a containment wall along its riverbank, built with drainage that lets rainwater through and keeps garbage in — engineered for the rainy-season floods that turn this river into a trash tsunami. Each named community becomes a stop on the plan: its own education campaign, its own wall, its own crew.
Contained waste has to go somewhere. Paid local crews collect it community by community, and under Head Engineer Greg Randall the stream feeds disposal and waste-to-fuel conversion — garbage in, diesel and electricity out.
The plan finishes where the garbage starts: a world-class waste facility for the capital, built to take millions of pounds a day and end the river of trash permanently — a river running clean past ninety villages, and a great city's garbage turned to fuel instead of poison.
Budget figures marked as estimates are the founder's long-range planning numbers for the full vision; detailed engineering budgets are developed phase by phase with our Head Engineer. Money raised today funds the phases in order — education and the pilot communities first.
No one person can fund the rescue of a sea. But a billion people giving a single dollar can — and together we become a wave no plastic can outrun. The ask is tiny on purpose, so nobody is priced out of saving the ocean.
“A dollar to save the ocean, from a billion hearts.”
Gifts are processed through CaribbeanCleanup.org and are tax-deductible in the U.S. through Hands for Honduras, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
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Hands for Honduras is a Christian organization answering the two great commandments of our Lord Jesus: to love God with all our heart, and to love our neighbor as ourselves — and our neighbor is everyone. The Earth is the Lord's household, and He has entrusted it to our care.
So we show His love in action: stopping the poison in the rivers before it reaches His ocean, bringing clean water to His children, feeding the hungry, sheltering His creatures, and leaving His household cleaner than we found it.
Matthew 22:37–39 · Psalm 24:1 · Genesis 2:15
Our official emblem — Honduras, in His hands. At its center is Honduras itself, large in the blue and white of its flag with its five stars, cupped in golden hands rising from the waters this ministry protects. Behind the country the sun rises; at the heart of the sun burns the cross, empty and glowing. Honduras is held in the hands of the Lord Jesus — held, never dropped.
The Wave & Reef — the Caribbean Cleanup logo. One great turquoise wave curls protectively around living coral and reef fish, with the river flowing in at the top — stopped before it can poison the sea. That is Caribbean Cleanup in a single image: stop the plastic in the river, protect the reef and the Caribbean Sea beyond it.
Christians are one of the largest families on Earth — more than two billion strong, and well over 200 million in the United States alone. We are inviting every church, every Christian group, and every believer to do the Lord Jesus' work together: love our neighbors, help the underprivileged around the world, and care for His household.
Per believer · one gift. If Christians across the United States each gave just $10 — one Sunday, one gift — the river could be stopped, local crews could be paid, clean water could flow, and this work would be funded. No one has to give a lot when everyone gives a little in Jesus' name.
Why the ocean? Because it feeds people who cannot buy food. Of all God created, the sea is one of His greatest gifts — it gives food to families who fish these waters because they cannot buy food. When plastic poisons the rivers and the sea, it takes food from their tables and threatens their children's future. Cleaning up the Lord's household is loving our neighbor — the ones who need Jesus' help most, and who are waiting for the Church to show up.
Ask everyone in your congregation to give $10 — as a special offering, a missions Sunday, or a simple pass-the-hat moment with a purpose. One church giving together can fund a cleanup crew, a day of clean water, or medicine for a community that has almost nothing.
Put Hands for Honduras in your missions budget, pray for our crews in Honduras by name, and share this story with your people. We will show your church exactly where its gifts land — the river, the beaches, clean water, or the animals — because every designation is honored.
Bible studies, youth groups, men's and women's ministries, and Christian schools: take the challenge together. Give $10, join the $1 Army, and invite three more believers to do the same. Small groups, multiplied by the whole Church, become an army.
All gifts are tax-deductible in the U.S. through Hands for Honduras, Inc., a 501(c)(3) — EIN 86-3216704. Churches and groups can designate gifts to River, Beaches, Water, or Animals.
Secretary and Head of Operations in Central America · Board Secretary · Based in Honduras
Every plan this organization makes is carried out in Honduras — and on the ground, Evert Villafranca Paz is the boss. A Honduran national based in Honduras, he holds field command of all our Central America operations: he assembles the local crews — an army drawn from the communities themselves — directs the daily work, and runs the operation more cost-effectively than any outside team ever could. He knows the terrain, the rivers, and the people because they are his own.
Evert also serves as Secretary of Hands for Honduras, Inc., one of the three officers of our 501(c)(3). He is not support staff; he is integral to this mission, and needed at its center. His seat on the board means the man who commands the work in Honduras also helps govern the organization behind it — decisions are made with the ground, not just about it.
Caribbean Cleanup is an initiative of Hands for Honduras, Inc. — a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit working hand-in-hand with Honduran communities since 2021.
Coordinates all efforts in Honduras and the Caribbean, working directly with community leaders on the ground. He brings 25 years of completing million-dollar projects in the multi-family construction industry — on schedule and on budget, leading crews he hired and trained — to a problem that has never had a builder running it.
The steady hand of this organization. A Green Bay building-company owner with an accountant's eye, Matthew is diligent, calm, and collected under pressure — the advisor the President runs everything past, and listens to. A man of deep faith, he holds this mission together with patience, integrity, and daily loyalty.
The boss on the ground in Honduras: he assembles the local crews, directs the daily field work, and commands all operations across the region.
Leads the organization's waste-management and waste-to-fuel engineering: turning collected river waste into diesel fuel and electricity, the plan's final stage.
We believe the Earth is God's household, and caring for it is the work He gave us. Around the world, poor communities depend on clean rivers, clean beaches, and a living sea for their food and their future. We serve them — and the children, animals, and waters in our care — as a matter of faith and of fact.