Red Deer’s waterways got a lot more scenic after shopping carts, bike tires and broken chair frames were removed during the fall shore clean-up on the weekend.
About 180 volunteers of all ages signed up at the Kerry Wood Nature Centre to pick up trash left along the river, park ponds and Red Deer creeks. “There were 64 groups of people,” said Todd Nivens, executive-director of the Waskasoo Environmental Education Society, who was pleased with the turn-out.
Nivens said nature lovers are generally the ones who volunteer. One woman told him, ”I’ve fallen in love with paddling on the river… so I want to help out.’”
The volunteers — who are supplied with disposal containers for needles and other sharps, “just in case,” said Nivens — hiked along the edges of waterways, in parks and under bridges looking for stuff that doesn’t belong in nature.
“The goal is to take away any physical product that doesn’t (benefit) wildlife or plant life,” he added.
Nivens said Red Deerians might be surprised to know what occasionally turns up, along with broken bicycles and bent hub caps, during these shoreline clean-ups. “Someone found an old microwave last year.”
It’s more usual for cheap air mattresses that deflated during a rafting adventure to be discovered, as well as mounds of beer cans, wrappers and other left-overs from warm-weather activities, said Nivens.
Although much trash is scooped up during the spring shoreline cleanup and the Green Deer campaign, Nivens believes it’s good to remove rubbish from nature before the snow comes or it freezes in the ice.
Summer is when most people are outdoors, and not everyone is scrupulous at taking away garbage, he added. Other trash unavoidably gets added to the mix because it gets blown in by the wind.
He noted that all refuse that can be recycled, such as metal from hubcaps or destroyed shopping carts, is taken to the landfill’s sorting stations.
While rough sleeper camps sometimes turn up, he tells volunteers not to disturb them because he doesn’t want getting into fights with people who still might be living there.
Camp cleanups are done several times a year by parks staff.
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