The River Project: Why NuRich Adopted the Mulberry River

The River Project is NuRich's philanthropy program, and the short version is this: we adopt and help clean rivers, funded by at least 1% of every sale, and the first river we adopted is the Mulberry River in Winder, Georgia. It is the giving-back half of what NuRich is building — the other half being our mission to produce clean, purified water. If you have wondered where the "gives back" part of the brand actually goes, this is it: real waterways, starting close to home. Here is why rivers are the right place to focus, and how the bottle in your hand connects to it.

Why rivers, and not the ocean directly

It is easy to picture plastic pollution as a problem of the open sea, but rivers are the highway that carries most of it there. Research mapping plastic flows found that rivers are the dominant pathway for land-based plastic reaching the ocean, with more than 1,000 rivers responsible for roughly 80% of riverine plastic emissions worldwide (Our World in Data, summarizing Meijer et al., 2021). That is actually good news for anyone who wants to help: it means a river is a place where cleanup and prevention have outsized effect. Stop the plastic at the river and it never becomes ocean plastic in the first place.

Meet the Mulberry River

The Mulberry River is a 28.2-mile tributary of the Middle Oconee River in north Georgia, running near Winder and forming part of the boundary between Barrow and Jackson counties before it joins the larger Oconee system (Mulberry River (Georgia)). It sits in the Upper Oconee basin, a watershed that feeds drinking-water supplies downstream. We chose it because it is local, because a smaller river is a place where consistent effort genuinely moves the needle, and because clean water close to home is exactly what NuRich is about. Adopting a specific river also keeps us honest — it is a named, visitable place, not an abstract cause.

The single-use problem the project pushes back on

Part of keeping a river clean is keeping plastic out of it, and single-use bottles are a big share of that plastic. Even the most recyclable common bottle plastic, PET, is recycled at a low rate: the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency put the recycling rate for PET bottles and jars at about 29% in its most recent comprehensive figures, meaning roughly seven in ten are landfilled, burned, or littered (EPA, Containers and Packaging: Product-Specific Data). A bottle that is not recycled is a bottle that can end up in a ditch, a storm drain, and then a river. Reducing how many single-use bottles we all go through is one of the most direct ways to cut what reaches waterways like the Mulberry.

How every order chips in

The River Project is funded by a standing commitment of at least 1% of NuRich sales going toward adopting and cleaning rivers. You do not have to do anything extra — the contribution is built into the brand, not a checkbox at checkout. And when you carry a durable, refillable bottle instead of buying single-use plastic, you are helping on the prevention side at the same time: fewer throwaway bottles produced and discarded is less plastic with a chance of reaching a river. The two halves work together, which is the whole idea.

The everyday swap that supports it

The simplest way to be part of this is the one you already control: replace disposable bottles with a refillable one you actually like using. A NuRich 32 oz Insulated Water Bottle ($29.99) covers most of a day on a single fill, and a NuRich 18 oz Insulated Water Bottle ($14.99) is the grab-and-go size. Every refill is a single-use bottle you did not buy — and a small part of your purchase goes to the river work. Browse the full lineup at the NuRich collection.

The bottom line

The River Project is NuRich's commitment to give back to the water that the whole brand is built around, and it starts with the Mulberry River in Winder, Georgia. Rivers are where most plastic pollution is decided, so cleaning and protecting one has real leverage — and choosing a reusable bottle over single-use plastic is the everyday habit that backs it up. Clean water, close to home, funded by the things you were going to drink from anyway.

Figures above are drawn from the linked public sources; details of the River Project reflect NuRich's current giving commitment and first adopted waterway.

Sources: Our World in Data, "Ocean plastics" (summarizing Meijer et al., Science Advances, 2021); "Mulberry River (Georgia)"; U.S. EPA, "Containers and Packaging: Product-Specific Data".