Cleaning up

More than 7,600 items of garbage were found along the city’s waterways Friday.

The second annual creek-side cleanup event, organized by Lakehead University’s Remedial Action Plans office as part of EcoSuperior’s month-long Spring Up to Clean Up event, saw students from six city schools cleaning the banks of McVicar Creek, Boulevard Lake and the Neebing, Current and McIntyre Rivers.

The most common garbage found was cigarette butts.

“There were 1,897 cigarette butts,” said Remedial Action Plans acting coordinator Graham Strickert. “There were 788 food wrappers, 576 candy wrappers, 482 plastic bags and 264 bottles.”

Two-thousand items fell into the other category and included couches, shopping carts and even a car door.

The purpose of the trash inventory is to discover what the more common items with the potential to land in the watershed are, said Strickert.

“These things and many more almost made it into the waterway and the participants in the creek-side cleanup helped to keep this garbage out of the freshwater system,” he said. “It would be great if every citizen of Thunder Bay could do their part to keep any garbage from going into the environment.”

Cigarettes are especially hazardous because their fiberglass filters don’t break down and hold concentrated levels of chemicals.

“They end up in fish and turtles and all kinds of marine aquatic life forms,” Strickert said.

The inventory also gives students a clear picture of the hazards of litter by giving them a checklist.

“It’s a more powerful message when they actually get to count and collate specific items,” said Strickert.