Meet the site coordinators of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup: Angela Petsnick

Angela Petsnick has made it an annual event for seven years and counting.  She lives and teaches in Fort Frances, Ontario and loves taking part with her students every year.  If you’re near by, you can join her cleanup – or find one in your area!  Her group has been so successful, in fact, that they were once featured in a promotional postcard for the event.

“The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup is a good way to kick off the school year and start thinking about the environment”, says Angela.  Read on to find out what else she has to say about it.
Q: When and how did you first get involved in the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup?
A: The first Shoreline Cleanup that I organized was in 2005.  Other schools in the district were participating, and it looked like something my Grade 3 class would love to participate in.  We decided to clean the shoreline along the international boundary waters (we can look across the river and see International Falls Minnesota).
 
Q: What is your favorite thing about this initiative?
A: My favorite thing about this initiative is teaching my students to take care of our garbage.  Our motto is “We are the problem, we are the solution”.  We all make garbage and we all have to take responsibility for cleaning it up.  The other thing that I love is that after 6 years of cleaning, we are noticing a decrease in garbage!   We know that it is partly because we are cleaning up litter that has been there for years, but we also know that the community is taking notice.
People used to throw their cigarette butts on the ground along the river, particularly in a picnic area in front of the hospital.  After the local newspaper did a story on the 2,093 butts that were picked up, the next year there were only 403….a great improvement!

Q: How do you encourage people in your community to get involved in cleanups?
 
A: We have a captive audience.  Two or three classes (about 60 children) are bussed to the river and some parents volunteer.  Getting children involved makes the grown-ups participate!
 
Q: Do you have any tips for new site coordinators?
A: Try not to make extra garbage while participating in the Shoreline Cleanup.  When we started, the Shoreline Cleanup office sent us garbage bags, lots of paper and plastic gloves.  The next year we contacted them well in advance to let them know that we had bought our own reusable (washable) work gloves.  We have a whole bin of them that our school uses for clean-ups and gardening. Our local big box stores sold them to us at a discounted rate because we purchased so many of them.
For school groups, another fun thing we do is ask each child to bring in a vegetable the day before the clean-up.  We wash and cut all the veggies, I bring a few pounds of cooked ground beef and some crock pots and put it all together the morning of the clean up.  When the students come back to the school, the smell of hot soup is waiting for them.  They go to their backpacks to take out the reusable mug and spoon they brought from home and sit back and enjoy some hot soup.  We really make an effort to not make more garbage on the day of the clean-up.