Nearly 60,000 registrants cleaned 2,000+ shorelines across Canada in 2015, removing almost 180,000 kg of litter from more than 3,000 km of shoreline.
— Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup
As a new member of our Rover Scout Group, Tina Liao was tasked to manage our annual Shoreline Cleanup Project to learn about 2 major aspects of Scouting: Project management and environmental stewardship.
Over the weekend, members of our scout group went to Garry Point Park in Richmond, BC, to do our part in ensuring that our local shorelines stay clean. Found in recent statistics, most of discarded trash along shorelines are left from human activity, less so from other animals or commercial traffic. The most substantial problem are unfortunately plastic bags and cans. From noon until 2:30pm, we managed to collect 2 full and hefty bags of garbage along with 1 bag of bottles to recycle. To properly dispose the trash, we were instructed to leave the bags at the park for the Municipality of Waste Disposal to collect.
You never really know how bad a problem is until you participate in a shoreline or highway clean up project. If you also want to keep the waterways in our community clean, sign up at Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup and check out our video recap here.