Environmental Student Society volunteers clean up around Centennial College’s Progress campus
Centennial College’s Environmental Student Society (ESS) played its part in Saturday’s Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup.
The cleanup took place in the area surrounding the college’s Progress campus and was deemed a success by ESS president Juan Orozco.
“Today’s event went pretty good even though it rained a bit in the morning,” he said. “It was also short notice for everyone but actually I thought we pulled it off and it turned out pretty good.”
The event, which ran from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., consisted of cleaning and separating everything volunteers could find. The results of what they find will be posted in the 2012 report which can later be found on the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup website.
“The cleanup involves everything,” Orozco said. “Whatever is there we’re going to separate it, count it and then weigh it. Then we just have to do the audit and then we will send the results for them to be posted.”
Professor Michael Gauthier, faculty adviser for the ESS, was also happy with the day’s accomplishments.
“I thought today was excellent for sure. You can see it in the faces of the people,” he said. “I was out there and I heard students saying this was a fun day [even though] they had been out there in the bush with gloves and bags pushing through a bunch of waste.”
Another positive for Gauthier is seeing different generations of families continue to show up to an event that has been happening for the past eight years.
“I think that the youngest we’ve had is a two-year-old and in the past we’ve also had children of students come and some have been coming on and off for the past eight years,” he said. “We had one chap come one year. He was about 87 and he came with his grandkids.”