Students Volunteer for Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup

Event held at Serpentine Greenway June 8 by Sustainable KSA

On a rainy Wednesday afternoon, ten volunteers gather at the Serpentine Greenway for Sustainable KSA’s Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup. The Kwantlen Student Association’s Sustainability Coordinator, Mairi Lester, hands out gloves, pincers, and garbage bags shortly before the group splits in half to tidy opposite sides of the five kilometre-long greenway, which qualifies as shoreline material for the creek and ponds it harbours.

Sustainable KSA has been organizing the event for the past three years, producing a total of five cleanups and “close to fifty or sixty kilos of waste.” The one held at the Serpentine Greenway on  June 8 is their sixth to-date, with the seventh planned for this coming September.

The Serpentine Greenway, although small, is home to a local ecosystem that could be disturbed by the litter strewn across its premises. As an area that is regularly frequented by students, families, and other members of the community, Lester considers it the ideal area for the cleanup.

“It was the nearest place to Surrey campus, and I knew it was within walking distance and it didn’t have a coordinator, so it made perfect sense to us,” she says.

She also chooses to continue hosting the cleanups twice per year because it “doesn’t take a lot of preparation and doesn’t cost money to run.” It also gives the KSA an opportunity to “do something that helps improve our community and the environment,” and brings Kwantlen Polytechnic University students from various faculties together. Although she notes that they “shouldn’t do it just to get thanks,” Lester has also been commended by passing members of the community while neatening up the spaces.

“It’s important that we give back to our community and I think this is a visible way to see some students out doing something, not for the sake of getting their degree or getting a project done, but just to give back,” she says.

The KSA’s vice president of student life Natasha Lopes seconds that statement, saying that the cleanups are “acknowledging the area we live in and making it better.” She personally used the greenway as a location for runs when she lived in the city, and calls it “a very widely used space.”

“I’m very thankful that we’re doing this cleanup, especially because I used to be one of the people who used that area, and there are still people who use that area and go for walks as families. It’s bringing the community together,” says Lopes.

Some of the more unusual items found over the past three years include mattresses, televisions, old bike parts, and baby carriages, but most of the litter collected consists of cigarette butts, wrappers, and miscellaneous plastic. After the volunteers are finished with the cleanup, they drop the bags off for the city of Surrey to collect and send a record of what they found to the Shoreline Cleanup Agency.

Sustainable KSA also looks after the campus garden and provides students with “education on how to use the organics system.” As well, they have a composter for the Grassroots, which they are hoping to get more use out of. Lester predicts that the fall will be spent working with MultiPass, a program designed to “help people to use the bus or bike or walk or carpool,” and continuing management of the campus garden.