Cleanup for a good cause

Tennis balls, basketballs, even part of a kitchen sink were just some of the items found by volunteers from the Loblaw Group of Companies and the World Wildlife Foundation found along the shores of Point Pleasant Park during the kick-off to the annual Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup on Sept. 17.

“One of our volunteers even found a bottle with a message in it — and they kept it,” said Mark Boudreau, director of corporate affairs for Loblaw Atlantic. “The strangest thing I ever heard that was found was a wedding dress, but that was in Vancouver.”

Apart from the items mentioned above, the most commons items found were plastics, aluminum cans and bottles. In total, the volunteers collected 80 bags of garbage within the timeframe of the beach sweep from the shoreline of the 186-acre park. The event is an opportunity for Canadians, including Loblaw colleagues and customers, to take direct positive action on the environment by keeping our waters, parks and communities clean.

The event was held on International Coastal Cleanup Day and was but one of between 35 and 40 shoreline cleanups happening throughout the region this fall. Boudreau says it’s a national initiative involving more than 1,500 Loblaw colleagues and friends, with more than 100 cleanups from coast to coast to coast.

“The uptake in involvement is higher here in Atlantic Canada because we all live so close to the coast. For example, here in Nova Scotia you’re never farther than 30 minutes from the ocean, so we know how important it is to protect that resource,” he says.

The Point Pleasant Park event served as the launch of the program for this year, with 30 of Boudreau’s colleagues, drawn mainly from the closest Atlantic Superstore on Barrington Street and another 120 volunteers, making 150 people spending two hours of their Saturday, combing the shoreline for litter.

“A few others from our company were out at Crystal Crescent Beach and in a few weeks we’ll be doing another cleanup at Hall’s Harbour,” he said. “We work in partnership with the WWF and there’s a site co-ordinator from them at the events.”

The 2015 cleanup had 1,867 participants at 73 registered sites. These volunteers cleared 83.7 kilometres of shoreline (out of the provincial total of 4,800 miles). There were 18,911 items removed, with a total weight of 2,982 kg of litter, 294 garbage bags filled and 87 kg of recyclables recovered. Cigarette butts and food wrappers lead the list of the 12 ‘dirty dozen’ most common items picked up. The strangest items picked up last year included a hamster cage, a muffin tin, a baking pan and one child’s pink Croc shoe.