Thanks to a nationwide shoreline cleanup initiative and about 20 local volunteers, the shores of Jessie Lake are a little bit cleaner.
The Beaver River Watershed Alliance (BRWA) organized Bonnyville's participation in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup on Sept. 4, an annual and national event that started 19 years ago in Vancouver. Aside from picking up litter and garbage around Canadian waterways, the program also logs and registers the amount of garbage being collected.
Though numbers for 2012 aren't in yet, across the country in 2011, 3,144 km of shoreline were cleaned up, with 143,737 kg of litter picked up and removed. The top five items found on Canadian shores were cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic bags, caps and lids, and plastic beverage bottles, a trend that volunteers in Bonnyville said was true for Jessie Lake as well, with a few interesting exceptions.
Volunteers found less cigarette butts than they expected, and they didn't expect to find a perfectly functional scooter at all.
“Part of it isn't just to clean up the lakes and rivers across the country, but also to raise awareness of it,” said Harry Kees, program manager for the BRWA who organized the Bonnyville event. “Nobody likes litter and around water, it's even more detrimental. In our case, all the waterfowl can be affected by it.”
He said though cleaning up the garbage along the lake is important, raising awareness is important as well, particularly in preventing people from littering in the first place.
“What I'd really like to drive home is the fact that we do this once a year, but that doesn't stop garbage from piling up throughout the year,” he said. “In a perfect world, this event wouldn't exist because we wouldn't have to worry about cleaning up the shoreline. I think it really is a call to look after your local waterways and if you're going to throw stuff out, use a garbage can or use a recycling bin. Jessie Lake isn't a garbage dump.
“We're pretty happy there hasn't been anything disastrous here, but there's still a lot of litter. One piece of garbage, like a bag of chips, it isn't going to have much of an effect, but if everyone thinks the same, it's going to add up. The message I'm trying to come across is to avoid litter in the first place.”
