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Organisation bleue has collected more than four tonnes of garbage from Quebec beaches and riverbanks throughout summer and, by the end of the month, expects to have harvested five tonnes.
The not-for-profit organization, working to protect the province’s shorelines, is asking Quebecers to take advantage of the back-to-school season to adopt habits that show concern for the environment.
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In about 20 cleanup events held in Montreal, on Quebec’s north shore and in the lower St-Lawrence region, volunteers combed shores to collect as much trash as possible: Organisation bleue engages members of different communities in which these events are held as well as local environment groups.
“It’s really a turning point for a lot of people,” said Organisation bleue founder Anne-Marie Asselin, a marine biologist. In collecting trash, people see for themselves the scope of the pollution on Quebec’s shorelines and this motivates many to adopt a more ecological lifestyle, she said.
The organization has a protocol of identifying plastic pollution and, at the end of each clean-up event, participants assemble what they have collected, Asselin explained.
“When we proceed to sorting, everyone empties his bag on a large tarp on the ground. And we sort everything we find,” she said. Among items collected by volunteers are plastic utensils, straws, plastic packaging, empty potato-chip bags and plastic bottles.
“Even I am always surprised at the end of each event,” Asselin said.
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“I say to myself: ‘Once again, we filled the tarp.’ It’s often where people really become aware that we are surrounded by garbage — and that we don’t always realize it.”
Organisation bleue plans four more cleanup events during the month of September and Asselin considers it likely they will bring the total weight to five tonnes of the trash collected this summer.
On the occasion of World Cleanup Day, which is held the third Saturday in September and which this year falls on Sept. 16, Organisation bleue plans four trash collection events: on Sept. 16 in Pointe-Claire, Sept. 17 in Lévis, Sept. 18 on Île d’Orléans, and Sept. 22 on les Îles-de-la-Madeleine.
The Sept. 22 event will conclude the organization’s cleanup season. It will have held 25 events.
In the wake of the summer’s trash collection events, Organisation bleue has observed many items from school lunches end up in the environment, incluing Ziploc-style plastic bags and granola-bar packaging, Asselin said. School and office material also ends up on Quebec shores, including pens and mechanical pencils.
During this transition from the end of summer to the start of autumn, the organization asks people make back-to-school purchases that are more eco-responsible.
“It’s a good time of the year to move to action,” Asselin said. She suggests parents buy more sustainable school supplies for their children or use recycled materials and also avoid plastic wrap in school lunches: rather, choose refillable pen and wood pencils and fabric bags for snacks, she said.
“Also, schools could offer drop-off points for school materials. There are companies in Ontario … where you can send specific materials that are not necessarily processed in recycling plants in Quebec.”
And school service centres could offer recommendations to schools to put into place initiatives that would reduce trash production in schools, Asselin said.
“I think that’s it’s time to go forward,” she said. “Everyone can be involved in protecting the environment.”
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