Keep Our Coasts Clean
Project Details
Working with the Surfrider Atlantic Canada team, this project established proper waste disposal systems at Lawrencetown beach and Conrad’s beach throughout the winter. They ran beach cleanups. This project covers the first 3 months.
Project Description
Working with the Surfrider Atlantic Canada team, this project was to ensure proper waste disposal systems at Lawrencetown beach and Conrad’s beach throughout the winter. We will also organize and implement a beach cleanup on the first Sunday of every month for the next year starting in January. The first three cleanups were located on the Halifax Harbour, Lawrencetown beach, and Martinique beach.
We were able to remove trash from local beaches preventing that trash from being washed into the winter during future large winter storms. Our project still has 1.5 months left in it so we hope to have received the garbage bins from the province by then so we can start that aspect of the project. We have purchased the cigarette recycling receptacles and are waiting to receive those. This will allow us to reduce the amount of cigarette buts we see at the beach.
What was your biggest challenge?
The weather was definitely our biggest challenge. We normally don’t get too much snow in Nova Scotia but this year was different. We had to postpone 2 of our cleanups to the following weekend due to weather. The sheer amount of snow everywhere also made our second cleanup a bit more difficult though we still were able to find a good amount of trash.
What was your most valuable takeaway?
I was astounded and a bit horrified with how much garbage, especially cigarette buts we actually found. My thought was that during the winter fewer people are using beaches and the Halifax waterfront area so there wouldn’t be that much trash around. That was an incorrect assumption. Even with all the snow we have we were still able to find lots of trash. This has reinforced my own belief that what we are doing is valuable.
