Litter on the shore

It was a beautiful day along the Ottawa River on Friday. If you drive west along the parkway you can pull into the parking lot above Westboro Beach where on that day the Ottawa Riverkeeper team was organizing a shoreline clean-up; they had made an appeal for volunteers to come along and help. More than twenty people showed up, including Beth, who's in my Environment Action group. We had to register online beforehand and sign a waiver. The City of Ottawa had provided a shelter, water bottles, grabber sticks, buckets and black rubbish bags for us to use.

At first sight the beach and its surroundings looked thoroughly clean. The sand of the beach had been mechanically swept, thus burying all the likely litter. We didn't think we'd have much to do. But as we searched we found more and more detritus, mostly in the form of cigarette butts and small pieces of broken glass beer bottles. Why on earth do people throw bottles so that they break? We could understand people throwing cigarette butts into the grass and pebbles. Many people think that the butts are bio-degradable, but they are not; they contain toxic chemicals and microplastics that do not disintegrate and that seriously harm the wildlife in and around the river. Chris and I found bits of fishing tackle lying around too: a lure tangled in a tree, even. 

A couple of young boys were hunting for litter with their mum, in our vicinity; they kept at it for over an hour and helped with the counting and weighing of the bags at the end of the exercise. Apparently we picked up more than 100 kg of stuff that shouldn't have been there.  The Ottawa Riverkeeper rep who led the event was someone I know, Alejandro. I'd met him on a one-to-one Zoom call while I was arranging for his boss to give a presentation to our Environment Action group last November, at a time when he was also studying in the UK, in Oxford. I admired the way he talked to the children at the clean-up, keeping them motivated.

After the work we lingered for lunch burgers at the beach café and Beth joined us for that meal. I'd love to have gone swimming at this designated swimming beach but the water was contaminated by sewage run-off after the torrential storms of the previous days, so swimming was not recommended on that day; what a pity.