Volunteers for the Coulee Clean-Up (Photo courtesy Coulee Clean-Up 2019 on Facebook)

By Justin Goulet

Cleaning Up

Over 450 bags of garbage collected during annual Coulee Clean-Up

Jun 4, 2019 | 10:48 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – The 12^th annual Coulee Clean-Up in Lethbridge was a major success.

The event saw volunteers cover different areas of the region to clean up garbage. Resource Development Coordinator at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre, Curtis Goodman, said there were over 1,000 volunteers for this year’s campaign.

Volunteers are still signing up to keep the community clean.

“We have 1,640 volunteer participants that have gone out into natural areas throughout Lethbridge and helped to remove 455 bags of garbage,” he told Lethbridge News Now.

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“This is pretty amazing because covering 96 natural areas in Lethbridge – that’s probably close to 3500 acres of terrain, so it’s nice to see the highest level of participation as well as a number of bags of garbage removed, improving the natural spaces for everybody.”

Goodman expressed his thanks to all those involved.

“It’s neat to see returning groups come back year after year, sort of taking on one area and saying, ‘this is ours…we want to make sure that it looks its best every single year’, and then to have a whole batch of new groups join this year has been wonderful, to get them to know some of those natural areas that they’ve maybe never been to before or spent much time in,” he noted.

He said the more years that pass, the less garbage they’re noticing.

“That, I think, speaks to the success of the overall program,” he said.

“When we first began, we were pulling out tons of bags of garbage on a per person basis. In fact, it was about 1.3 to 1.4 full bags per person, whereas this year we’ve had 0.27 bags per person, which represents a significant decrease.”

He called the campaign a “success story overall”.

ENVIRONMENT WEEK

This week is Environment Week across Canada, and the Helen Schuler Nature Centre has an event set for Wednesday, June 5.

The shoreline clean-up will start up at 6:00 p.m. Participants will meet up at the Nature Centre to gather supplies and will then move over to the shoreline.

“We’re going to be focusing on the nature reserve park and with the shoreline clean-up, we track every individual piece of garbage that we collect, just so we can better understand what types of garbage are here and how can we link that back to its source and hopefully stop it before it even enters the natural environment,” Goodman explained.

He added that participants should wear some comfy, sturdy shoes and bring a water bottle and a hat to help keep cool.

He said if residents are not able to make Wednesday night’s clean-up but want to get involved, they can contact the team at the Helen Schuler Nature Centre for other volunteer opportunities.

More details can be found at naturecentre.ca.