(L-R) Troy Murphy, Zach McEwen, Ryan Renaud, and Ty Ernst, bringing back just some of their garbage haul from the breakwall.

Raina Watson,
Co-op Student

Saugeen District Secondary School (SDSS) students had their 10th annual beach cleanup September 21.

The cleanup was part of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a Canada-wide project encouraging people of all ages to take care of our water.

This year Mrs. Darlington Smith’s Grade 9 geography class accepted the torch from the Planeteers, an environmental group that wanted to learn more about the impacts of aquatic garbage and help in fighting against it.

The class went to the Port Elgin main beach at 10 a.m. and started clearing up everything from plastic, glass bottles to kids’ toys. They really got to see the sheer volume of garbage left throughout the summer without consideration of the harm it causes to the environment, as well as the aesthetics of the beach.

Students learned about the function of dunes and the grass that holds them together, also noticing the American Beach Grass acting as a natural net to trap trash in one area. P

Plastics that end up in the water come in all shapes and sizes, acting as a sponge, concentrating toxins such as heavy metals and chemicals that otherwise would have been diluted in the water.

"The students were very engaged and successful, really taking an interest in what they were doing for the community," Mrs. Darlington said.

While there was a reduction in the number of cigarette butts found this year, the students still managed to pick up a whopping 958 from just a small area of the beach.

"We picked up over 300 cigarette butts in just our group of five,” student Emma Hingston said after she and her friends had focused on the parking lot at the beach. It might not seem like a shocking number but they can be dangerous for the animals that live on the beach and in the lake that make the mistake of seeing them as food.

The students also kept track of what they collected. Here’s the tally:

302 pieces of plastic, 123 food wrappers, 76 pieces of paper, 27 6-pack rings, 26 pieces of foam, 17 clothing items and 18 kids toys. In total all of the items collected amounted to 6.5 pounds of garbage and one pound of recycling.

This was an amazing job done and was a huge benefit to our community.

The project also got students thinking more about the impact we have on where we live. This is an important project and I'm looking forward to next year’s clean up as well and any in between, to keep our beaches pristine and clean.

(L-R) Alexa Janes, Emma Hingston, Zoe Shave, Kyra Brough, and Sofia Weigel, making the playset and parking lot spick and span.