Earth Day 2016 brought a new and exciting initiative to the Western community, a large, collaborative campus clean-up event that involved university staff, students and volunteers from across campus. For the first time at Western, a group of graduate students from the Environment and Sustainability Collaborative Program brought a nationwide program – the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean Up – to partner with Sustainability Western and EnviroWestern on the university’s annual Campuswide Clean Up Day, which takes place on or around Earth Day each year.
In 1994, the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean Up began as a small event organized by the Vancouver Aquarium to clean up garbage at a local beach in Stanley Park. Joined by World Wildlife Fund and other sponsors and partners, it has grown into a series of clean-up events throughout the year where more than 20,000 volunteers across Canada work together to remove litter from shorelines and riparian areas.
This was the first year to include a northern section of the Thames River in London, Ont.
Litter is one of our most visually obvious, ubiquitous and disturbing environmental problems, polluting ecosystems and negatively affecting wildlife while interfering with the beauty and integrity of nature. Clean-up events are designed to raise our awareness of the impacts of human consumption and avoid unnecessary and wasteful items like plastic drinking straws that can end up harming wildlife.
While the numbers on the amount of waste recovered throughout the day at Western were staggering – 180 pounds of recyclables and 280 pounds of garbage (material destined for landfill) – there is hope a small group of volunteers could accomplish so much in so little time. The Thames River shoreline clean-up consisted of about 20 volunteers, mostly graduate students from departments across campus such as Anthropology, Geography, Earth Sciences and Biology and covered approximately 50 metres of shoreline on both sides of the river beginning at the University Drive Bridge.
The students divided up into four teams led by Heather Peacock (official site coordinator and leader of the event), Jeremy Grimstead, Holly Stover and Rebecca Doyle, and targeted litter hot spots behind Delaware Hall, heavily trafficked walking trails and even the river itself.
The stream invertebrate and river geomorphology teams from Geography professors Adam Yates’ and Peter Ashmore’s research groups, led by Grimstead, donned chest waders, removing large items from the Thames, such as scrap metal, bicycles and furniture. The teams found more than 150 recyclable beverage bottles, and a wide variety of other plastics and trash including bike locks, electrical wire, a shower curtain, clothing, a fishing reel and a Western Parking sign. Shockingly, much of the material found was recyclable, well worn and aged, becoming buried in sediment. What was most alarming was the density of litter per unit area, keeping teams stuck in a small space for much of the clean-up time; areas covered with dense litter were eventually nick-named “motherloads.” But teams remained positive despite the sadness of encountering so much garbage in a natural area in such a small space, knowing that whatever they are doing now will have a positive impact on the future.
It was a very successful day, great weather, with lots of enthusiasm, and the good news is Western’s Great Canadian Shoreline Clean Up will continue as a program run by Environment and Sustainability Collaborative Program students, hopefully as a lasting partnership with Campus Clean Up Day (Sustainability Western and EnviroWestern).
The day would not have been possible without all of the dedicated volunteers who participated, Beverly Ayeni and Sustainability Western who coordinated the logistics, clean up supplies, and a BBQ lunch for all participants and the efforts for the entire Campus Clean Up day run by EnviroWestern undergraduate student volunteers. To quote Mhairi McFarlane, Conservation Science Manager with the Nature Conservancy of Canada, “for a lot of terrible reasons we have some wonderful opportunities.” We have the opportunity to make a difference and reverse the damage caused by environmental degradation.
In the Western community, Earth Day is a special day for us and will continue to be an event to bring a community together, and make the campus environment as litter-free as possible, for the sake of terrestrial, river and riparian ecosystems on campus.