Lending a hand

Christine Stortini, a second-year marine biology student, was among the 100 people who helped clean up the shores of Point Pleasant Park. (Josh Boyter Photo)

Cigarette butts and a pair of ladies underwear: one was the most common type of garbage picked up by Dalhousie students, the other the most bizarre. I will leave it up to you to guess which is which.

Observers may have been confused by the students in yellow T-shirts stooping over to pick up garbage, but the students did have purpose. They were at Point Pleasant Park with their gloves and garbage bags to participate in the TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup last Saturday.

Graham Carey, a third-year Dalhousie Chemistry and Physics major, is the campus motivator for the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation.

“I’ve been connected with the environment and doing environmental work for the past couple of years so for me it’s such a great thing to get other students motivated and other students involved and get them to help out with something like this,” he said.

The TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup is an annual national event that takes place at shorelines all over Canada, from Vancouver to Halifax. There are many good reasons to have an event like this.

Roopa Mulherkar, a 21-year-old English and French major, said, “We all use the park and we should all pitch in ... It’s one of the nicer places in Halifax. It’s a good idea to keep it clean.”

“I feel like right now the environment is in a bad state and that there’s a lot of people trying to help clean it up, so I figured why not come down and help out?” added Dal student Sarah Ready.

There is an additional, deeper purpose to the clean up too.

Site coordinator Amy Florian, 20, explained, “The way this kind of cleanup works is that it’s not just cleaning up the area selected. It’s also keeping track of what was collected.

“There are data cards that each participant is given and we collect all of those at the end of the cleanup and send them to TD Canada Trust and the Vancouver Aquarium. They use what statistics they can find, such as what was the most common item, what was the most bizarre item, to try and improve or prevent pollution.

“If they are finding, for instance, that there are tonnes of bubblegum wrappers then they can look into why is it that our shorelines are being polluted with bubblegum wrappers.”

Another way the garbage collection was monitored by the cleaners was by weight. This year it was estimated that 50 kilograms of garbage was picked up from Point Pleasant Park’s shores.

Ms. Florian says she is really happy with the event and considers it a success.

“I’m really happy with the turnout. We’ve counted 100 people so far, but I think there can always be more,” she said.

For next year’s shoreline cleanup, Ms. Florian hopes to take more of a partnership with Point Pleasant Park officials, who expressed their appreciation for the student interest. She would also like to pump up advertising to get even more students involved.