CLEANING UP THE RIVERFRONT
University students lead by example
Armed with garbage bags and latex gloves, University of Windsor students took to the riverfront sculpture garden Friday to save the planet. A crew of about 20 volunteers met at the foot of California Avenue ready to pick up coffee cups, cigarette butts and other trash from the grounds along the Detroit River. “Some people don’t bother putting these things in garbage cans,” said Tanya Basok, environmental sustainability advocate for the university. “The idea is to clean up as much as possible and keep the river clean.” Basok hosted the event in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund, a world leader in international conservation, which collaborates with colleges and universities to bring environmental sustainability to post-secondary institutions through its Living Planet @ Campus programs. “By doing a shoreline cleanup, you’re making a big difference,” said Tamara Latinovic, co-ordinator for the World Wildlife Fund’s nature connected communities department.
She passed out trash bags and checklists for students to keep track of what they collected. “We can do some great work on the ground in Windsor,” said Latinovic. “Windsor can really be a trailblazer in Canada.” Approximately 80 per cent of trash that starts on land makes its way into water, according to Latinovic, who graduated from the University of Windsor before moving to Toronto to work for the World Wildlife Fund. There will be more plastic items in the ocean than there are fish by the year 2050, she said.
“If it ends up in the water, fish will consume it and die,” Basok said before joining the students in picking up trash. “If they don’t die, then we might consume them and it affects our health.”
One third of Ontario’s species at risk are found in the region spanning from Windsor to Markham, also known as the Carolinian forest. Around 25 per cent of Canadians live in the same region, Latinovic said.
Since September, Latinovic has co-hosted about 10 student-driven shoreline cleanups across Ontario. This is only the World Wildlife Fund’s second year hosting the events, but Latinovic said she’s glad to see the effort’s popularity. “For me, it’s a pro-social behaviour, so hopefully other people will see it and want to help out the environment too,” said Renee Rocheleau, a fourth-year developmental psychology student. After an hour picking up garbage, her bag was half full.
A lot of the trash she saw was on the waterside of riverfront guardrails, where volunteers couldn’t reach it, Rochleau noted. On the windy Friday afternoon, those bits of trash were likely to fly into the water.