Angered by the need to continually pick up garbage off the side of Adams road near the Dog Ranch, Karen Munroe organized last weekend’s island-wide Earth Day clean-up.
“Our roads are a giant garbage box,” she says. “At the Dog Ranch, we use green tape to label everything but it ends up everywhere. I’ve been really insistent with my staff that when they’re walking they pick it up whenever they see it and put it in the garbage. I think we need to have the same sort of policy for people walking on the island.”
Munroe says that the island’s main roads, Adams and Grafton, are probably the worst for garbage, but bus stop areas and Bowen Lift areas are bad for cigarette butts. For Saturday’s cleanup, Munroe and Julia Tweten picked up garbage from the top of the ferry line-up and the school to the four corners.
“That took us two hours,” she says. “The only garbage can around there is up on the hill near the top of the ferry line-up. I don’t know anyone who even goes up there! The muni definitely needs to step-up and put in more garbage cans. Also, in Edmonton I saw ashtray type things attached to the telephone poles. We could use something like that, too.”
Munro estimates that between 40 and 50 volunteers participated in the clean-up, all tackling different parts of the island.
She says that two dead animals (a goose and a cat) were found, and the most disgusting item hauled in was a cat-climbing unit.
“My one tonne-truck got filled up after the two hours,” says Munro. “But there is still so much work to be done.”
