Beach Cleanup Crew
Working with the Recycling Society
The 2017 Mayne Island annual beach cleanup, sponsored by the Recycling Society and the Conservancy, returned to our beaches and coves on Sunday April 30th, the state of tide determining the 1 pm start. This popular event draws about 100 volunteers each year. They donate a couple of hours of their time, and under the guidance of a team captain comb one of Mayne Island’s 10 popular beaches. All the refuse collected is taken to the recycling depot, categorized and weighed. In 2016 we gathered 3,647 pounds of garbage, the largest haul we have made during the 10 years of operations. The 2017 total, though not a record, was definitely in the same ball park— read on for thanks, stats & stories!
The 2017 Clean-up
The Mayne Island Recycle Centre opened for business on the afternoon of the 30th to welcome the volunteers and their beach trash. Thanks to Vicki Turay who logged the rubbish weighed in by Michael Dunn and to Grant Buday and crew who stowed the stuff pending acceptance into the various disposal and recycle streams.
Vicki Turay writes:
Thank you to everyone who helped with the clean-up this year. We removed over 3000 pounds of debris and had more than 100 people help. I am very grateful to the beach captains who each year cheerfully agree to take on the task, Michael Dunn works with the school and does the weigh-in at the depot, Grant organizes the depot and hauls the trash away, Maeva helps with the recording and keeping me sane, and Don & Rob do the poster and other publicity work. It really runs like a well oiled machine with the oil being our care and commitment to our home beach environment.
As usual the greatest amount of shoe leather shed in getting to site was suffered by the Peter Askin and the Edith Point team. Between treks in and out, they were able to fill two wheeled conveyances of variable quality with an amazing amount of detritus, including perhaps more of that oil absorbent boom mentioned last year. But the best story from the clean-up is the concrete and Styrofoam float that washed up at Piggott Bay. This massive piece of debris was far too heavy to load onto a truck, so Kim Harris & team took pick axes to try to break it up. Valiantly they managed to break off some smaller chunks each of which weighed some hundreds of pounds (pictured below.) We have contacted the CRD to see if the remaining piece can be barged off island.
The float.
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