Around 250 people hit the back roads and streets of the Powell River region on Saturday, April 30 to pick up garbage and clean up other people’s messes.
Trash Bash brought together multiple local groups and individuals interesting in putting in some labour to help clean up the community. School groups, Royal Canadian Army Cadets, conservation officers, ministry of forests, lands and natural resource operations employees, Rotary International, the Powell River ATV Club and many other groups participated in the event.
Groups registered the morning of the event at Willingdon Beach before heading off to their assigned sites to start the clean up. Participants worked through the morning before heading back to the beach for a lunch and door prizes. Co-organizer through BHC Consulting Abby McLennan said that volunteers always end up excited to find trash and get into a zone where they just want to go out and find more.
Although the tonnage of garbage collected hadn’t been officially counted at the time of writing, McLennan estimates it either matched last year’s 17-tonne record or surpassed it. She said there’s still lots of garbage out there too that they were unable to collect, so the number, while impressive in terms of hard work from volunteers, indicates that a lot of people are still dumping refuge where they shouldn’t be.
Among the items collected were the usual assortment of household garbage, mattresses, couches, mill felt, appliances and the usual number of discarded baby diapers found anywhere from in garbage bags to thrown into the woods. McLennan said that after three years of Trash Bash it takes an extreme find to surprise her, but for anyone new she said they would be shocked at the kind of things people seem to think are okay to toss anywhere.
“Out on the backroads you’re expecting to see wildlife and trees and it’s pretty disheartening when you see mattresses and piles of garbage,” said McLennan. “Just having the event gets everyone pretty pumped up about picking up garbage, which otherwise I don’t know if people would be so keen.”
