Woman takes action on litter-filled green space
Doris Cormier had help from a few others to clean up an area on St. Mark’s Avenue on Earth Day
CORNER BROOK — Littering has been a pet peeve of Doris Cormier’s for many years.
“I hate it,” the Corner Brook woman said.
Cormier is a regular walker and a couple of times a week she walks in the area around St. Mark’s Avenue.
It’s close to the Murphy Square shopping area, and since the snow has gone her walks have been less than pleasant.
“I took a walk here a few days ago and I was completely disgusted.”
A green space that is across the street from a playground and near an elementary school and Murphy Square was filled with litter, she said.
“It made me feel completely disgusted and embarrassed to see this in our beautiful city.”
Cormier could have just kept on walking, but that’s not in her nature.
She and her husband, Keith Cormier, have always believed in keeping things clean and tidy and disposing of waste in a proper manner.
It’s a practice they have done for years and instilled in their children and now in their grandchildren.
“We’re all residents of this planet we call Earth, and we have to take responsibility for living,” she said.
“It’s part of who we are now,” said Keith Cormier.
When their sons were younger, he took them fishing and came home with a dip net full of garbage, he said.
So, on Thursday, Earth Day, the couple set about cleaning up the area with some help from Doris’s brother and sister-in-law, Don and Dawn Taylor. They were later joined by Gerry Glode.
“It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it,” she said.
“This spot here, because it’s close to Murphy Square, has a little bit of everything.”
Coffee and other drink cups, food wrappers, shopping bags, boxes, wipes, masks and even a condom scattered the ground.
A lot of the material was blown up against fences around the area and could be easily raked up, but some had stuck to the shrubs and was a little more difficult to retrieve.
As they cleaned, they were cautious, keeping an eye out for needles and other dangerous debris.
Don Taylor and his wife have helped clean up areas of the city before, so when his sister asked for help, they had no trouble volunteering.
He said it was a shame to see such a mess with a playground nearby, but he wasn’t surprised by it. He’s seen just as bad in other areas of the city.
“So many fast foods and everything being chucked out through car windows.”
They started just before 10 a.m. and about 2 1/2 hours later had completed the job, with 17 bags of litter collected. The city was to pick up the bags for disposal later in the day.
As for what could be done to stop the litterers, Keith Cormier wondered if some form of surcharge on drinking cups might help.
Doris Cormier said having more garbage cans around could be helpful.
“The only thing I know is we just have to keep cleaning it up because I don’t know if these people will ever stop what they’re doing. I guess education is the key, but I don’t know,” she said.
“I think that if people took it upon themselves to clean up different areas, things would look a lot nicer.”