CELEBRATING EARTH DAY
April 25, 2016
This year at High Point we decided to make April our Earth Month by bringing awareness to different earth initiatives in our industry and to give back to our earth and our community. Throughout this month, all the product tastings held in the store have been either organic, biodynamic or sustainable. We also opened up Sunday afternoons to take unlimited empty returns, but our favorite initiative was participating in the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean Up this past Saturday.
Every year, tens of thousands of Canadians participate in this clean up initiative..… This year there were 5 more! Our assigned shoreline clean-up was at New Brighton Park, just down the road from us. The weather wasn’t the greatest, it was a little overcast and drizzling, but our spirits were bright!
We took the strategy of divide and conquer, grabbed our garbage bags and started from the road and worked our way to the beach.
We soon realized how terrible Styrofoam is and how it ruins the shoreline, it’s nearly impossible to pick up all the pieces. The one thing we were all surprised to find, was the number of foam ear plugs that are on the beach…. Not what we expected
After two hours we completed our clean up area, which ended on the beach. We gathered up all of our bags and started the sorting and documenting process.
The folks at Great Canadian Shoreline Clean Up sent us a questionnaire to fill out in order for them to gather as much information as possible. Here was our tally of the garbage we collected: 250 cigarette butts, 65 food wrappers, 20 takeout containers plastic, 12 takeout containers foam, 67 bottle caps, 27 lids, 30 straws, 15 grocery bags, 12 other bags, 32 cups and plates, 1 diaper, 5 syringes, 3 tampons, 50 tobacco wrappers, 10 strapping bands, 1 propane bottle, 1 cross, 5 pieces of clothing, 2 fishing buoys, 30 yards of fishing line, 60 yards of rope, tons and tons of pieces of Styrofoam. We had 10 bags of garbage altogether and a few recyclable bottles and cans.
All in all, we had a great time and are quite proud of our First Annual Shoreline Clean-up!
