Thank you to all of volunteers who gave their time and offered their services to help make this event a great success. Over the next several days we will be compiling the data collected to submit to the Vancouver Aquarium. We will also be publishing our findings here on our local website, so please check back in a couple of days for the complete results.

Front Page News Woodstock Sentinel Review Tuesday September 26

Thank You to Our Volunteers

Taking trash off the beach
The Woodstock Sentinel-Review

By Susan Kirwin - Staff Writer
Tuesday September 26, 2006

Cigarette butts are the first thing that comes to mind when Jim Bender talks about garbage.
Whether it’s on a city street or nature trail, you’re bound to come across more than you can count, he says.
Though small and seemingly harmless, cigarette filters are not environmentally friendly - they don't break down.
“The worst garbage is cigarette butts - they are number 1 around the world,” Bender said. “It looks bad and there’s no reason for it.”
Bender is a smoker but he stores his butts in his pocket until he finds a trash can.
Last year, volunteers picked up 208,855 butts from shorelines across the country in the TD Canada Trust Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.
With rubber gloves, poking sticks and garbage bags, Bender, his wife Angela and about 40 volunteers covered two kilometres of shoreline along Pittock Lake on Saturday to help make a dent in the garbage continually discarded in the area.

From fast food wrappers and plastic bottles to condoms and fishing lures, just about anything can be found along the nature trail that circles Woodstock’s only lake.
“This won’t have an overnight impact on the lake but hopefully this will encourage people to lobby for more garbage cans and recycling,” Bender said.
Volunteers kept a detailed list of all the garbage they collected, with one category for the most unusual item.
Volunteers in past cleanups have come across false teeth, a toilet seat nailed to a lawn chair and even Celine Dion albums.
Bender said people need to take it upon themselves to clean up the environment.

“We can’t rely on the bureaucrats and government officials. It’s got to be a grassroots initiative to change things,” he said.
Bender partially blamed the public's drive-thru mentality on the deterioration of the environment. He said he often picks up take-out garbage along his street.
Jacklin Hickey, who takes her family boating at Pittock, was picking up garbage with her daughter Nicole, 9, on Saturday.
She said they see garbage every time they visit the lake.
“I say, ‘Kids, go pick that stuff up,’” Hickey said. “This is the only planet we have. We all have to take care of it.”
Other items that have topped cleanup inventories year after year include food wrappers, caps and lids, glass beverage bottles and plastic bags.
The cleanup is the second largest in the world. Cleanups are scheduled along lakes, rivers oceans, wetlands and ponds across Canada from Sept. 16 to 24.

Clean-up program a great success locally
The Woodstock Sentinel-Review

Jim Bender - Woodstock
Tuesday September 26, 2006

On Saturday, Sept. 23, a good number of people (approximately 40) and myself spent the day picking up garbage at Pittock Lake Park, participating in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup. The event was a giant success.

I wanted to thank everyone who participated: Dave Nadalin who came out and offered up his services including the removal of a few tires for us, (all city councillors, including our mayor, had been invited); the Oxford NDP Riding Association which mustered up some people (their riding president and her family) and offered up a truck to haul the garbage to the dump, (we filled this truck to capacity); all the guys at the parks department who lent us their trusty “garbage pokers,” which were of great value to us; John Duffy Sr., who brought his grandkids out for the day (what a way to teach good environmentalism and what a great job he and those little ones did); the staff at Central Public School that sent out a group of kids, with an EA, (who participated in earnest); the operators of Nomad Radio who being new to Woodstock thought this was a great way to get out and meet people in the community; Heart FM for their strong presence in the days leading up to the cleanup, informing people what was up; the Oxford Shopping News and the staff at the S-R for their promotion of the event and the great number of people who came out, got down and really dirty, picked up garbage and made an impact on our local environment.
Students earned volunteer hours for the event and several high school students came out to fulfil those hours. It was a great day, the weather held out and we worked in relatively dry conditions.

The amount of garbage was astounding. The types of garbage tossed into the local eco-system is far ranging. My biggest brick for the day though is to the folks who pick up their dog poop with those little provided bags (or grocery bags). What are you doing picking it up with that handy little bag, then throwing it under the nearest shrub? I picked up 23 bags of doggy doo, fully sealed up in nice plastic bags chucked under the nearest bush. You people would be better off just letting it lie where it’s dropped instead of bagging it up for our future generations to come across. 

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Next on the list: Tim Hortons’ cups and their pesky invincible lids, water bottles, bait containers, fishing line, fishing lures, hooks, crack pipes, syringes, an entire campsite with someone’s entire life left behind (kids clothes, pictures, toys and legal documents, construction materials, real estate signs and the most astounding discovery of all, a styrofoam clamshell container marked “quarter pounder with cheese.’’ Does anyone remember when McDonald’s quit using those things? It had been lying in the bush for many years and still looked like it was tossed out yesterday. A true artifact of our food- pop culture.

Everyone had the opportunity to take in a beautiful day in wonderful surroundings, on a great fall day. We all made an impact. If we all took it upon ourselves, we could make Woodstock more than just a great place, but a clean place for all to enjoy, for many years to come.
In coming weeks we will compile this data and send it off to the Vancouver Aquarium, and the Ocean Conservancy Institute. They will place the data in a worldwide bank and will use this information to build better environmental laws and to pressure fast food industries to come up with better ways to sell their stuff.
I don’t think we only need to do this one day a year, but everyday when we are out walking. We should take it upon ourselves to remove those items of refuse. Let’s put litter in its’ place.”