Pitch in with Great Canadian Cleanup

Amy Florian is the site coordinator for the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup in Point Pleasant Park on Sept. 20. (Nick Pearce)

Expect to find cigarette butts, plastic wrappers, tampon applicators, condoms, plastic cutlery, straws, coffee cup lids, stir sticks and much, much more.

The Atlantic Ocean continues to be a dumping ground for trash. Thousands of seabirds, marine mammals and turtles end up dying after becoming entangled or ingesting plastic debris.

“I think sometimes we forget how lucky we are in Nova Scotia … we’re 20 minutes from the ocean pretty much anywhere in the province and we don’t take enough care,” says Amy Florian, the Dalhousie student who is organizing the TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup in Point Pleasant Park on Saturday, Sept. 19.

Last year, Dalhousie was the only university to take on a cleanup site. So this year, Point Pleasant Park will be an official kick-off site for the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a national event started by the Vancouver Aquarium 15 years ago.

It promises to be fun, says Ms. Florian, a fourth-year French and biochemistry student from Greenwood, N.S. The cleanup starts at 10 a.m. and will be followed by a free lunch. Tiger patrol vans will shuttle students from the Dal SUB to Point Pleasant Park starting at 9:30 a.m.

There will be booths set up near Black Rock Beach for groups including the Vancouver Aquarium, Ecology Action Centre and  TD Friends of the Environment, along with cool things for kids like stilt walkers and face painters. There will be prizes for the students who discover the most bizarre items and those who collect the most.

“It’s a one-time volunteer commitment,” says Ms. Florian, “so go out and enjoy yourself before the school crunch comes on.”

She expects the litter problem to be worse than last year. The Halifax Sewage Treatment Plant on Barrington Street was shut down after a power failure in January and the screens to filter out solids were removed in May. Volunteers will carry data cards and track the garbage they collect along the shoreline of the park.

She bristles at suggestions that university students are the biggest contributors to the problem by treating toilets like garbage cans. “Obviously, it’s not one group’s problem. The murky waters of the harbour are everyone’s problem.”

To join the cleanup, register online at The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup and follow the directions to the left of the home page. http://www.vanaqua.org/cleanup/home.php

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