The banks of the Assiniboine River are a bit cleaner, thanks to the help of several dozen volunteers.
Taking advantage of the low river levels, the Assiniboine Park Conservancy and Pride Winnipeg, along with various volunteers, teamed up Saturday to pick up litter along the shoreline.
“It’s actually a lot of fun getting out and contributing in this way,” says Marc Brandson, curator of animal care with Assiniboine Park Zoo.
“There are plenty of shorelines and garbage in parks that can be picked up and you’re doing a civic service as a result, but also helping the environment which is great.”
The event began at 1:00 p.m. and by 7:00 p.m. Brandson says they’ll be sorting through everything they collected and sending it off for recycling or composting as necessary.
“We have participated in shoreline cleanup and we do a regular Assiniboine Park cleanup, but in this case, we are participating with the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, which is a Canada-wide shoreline cleanup,” Brandson says.
“We anticipate doing this on an annual basis likely starting in the spring going forward.”
Brandson says they were expecting around 100 people to help the effort, and about an hour in had already reached half that.
Renata Machado, who works with both Pride Winnipeg and the Assiniboine Park Conservancy, says they were already seeing more trash than expected.
“As you can see, it’s just started and it’s already full; we have a lot,” Machado says, adding they’d encountered quite a few face masks, which can be recycled on-site.
“You don’t understand how big the problem is if we don’t go and pick up waste ourselves. Once you do that, you realize it’s a big problem and maybe once you are here at the park you say ‘hey, let me rethink my ways, let me think of how I’m consuming my food, all my daily habits.”
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