Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup - The Sequel

On Saturday we took part in "The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup" for the second year in a row.  Mike's company, HATCH, always puts together a group of volunteers for this event,  and the girls were game to take part again. 

We woke up to a rainy, cloudy, grey day on the Coast.  Not exactly the kind of weather that you want to have for walking around on the beach picking up garbage.  But Mike and I served as cheerleaders for "Team Penner" and said, "if everyone looked outside and then stayed home, who would  clean up the beach?"  That did it.  We were dressed for rain and drove down to Spanish Banks beach to get picking!

Once again, the girls were keen to use the "grabby-thingies" (obviously a technical term).  Mike was the crew chief, and I served as administrator.  You have to tally up each piece of garbage you pick up.  Each.  Piece.  That meant there was a lot of "cigarette butt" heard yelled in my direction over and over and over again!

Notice Sasha's HATCH t-shirt hanging out the bottom of her jacket.  It's 30 sizes too big for her, but we're proud of our team!

Ellie has a skill for finding things on the shoreline that are not garbage and do not need to be picked up. 

She has a special fondness for Bull Kelp. 

And now she gets with the program and deposits a plastic cup into the bag.  Nice job, Ellie!

Ellie was wearing blue plastic gloves and would sometimes dig into the sand carefully to expose a piece of garbage.  I laughed out loud - she reminded me of a forensic investigator!

As the morning went on, the drizzle stopped and the sky started to clear up just a little.  The Vancouver skyline is still beautiful on a cloudy cool day.

Here's our final tally sheet.  In the end we picked up 3 kilograms of garbage.  Most of that was cigarette butts.  DON'T let your butt fall onto the sand and then leave it there, people!  Another surprise to us is always how many balloons we find and pick up.  I guess a lot of people have birthday parties at the beach.  Straws, bread tags, and food wrappers are also high numbers on our tally sheet.

  The beaches in B.C. are beautiful. 

Let's keep them that way.