BWIC honour International Coastal Clean-Up Day
The early morning of Saturday the 11th November found around sixty students, teachers and parents from The Collegiate out and about in Long Bay, The Bight, and Blue Hills, donning gloves and carrying bags to clean up our beautiful beaches. The clean-up was organized by the Student Council in honour of International Coastal Clean-Up Day, (an event which we also believed would be beneficial in helping to clear away any remaining detritus left by the recent hurricane, Irma).
At the start of the clean-up, I stood at the edge of the beach down at The Bight and saw a great turn out of people individually picking up garbage; at this early hour, it almost seemed as if everyone was just getting out of bed as they shuffled along the sand. But, eventually, as the team began to wake-up, found some energy, everyone began to help each other out, soon engaging in laughing and joking as they compared their “valuable” finds. Happily, the garbage near the Fish Fry area was not as bad we expected, so we decided to send a large number of our team down as far as Coral Gardens. At that part of the beach, we began to put our efforts into cleaning up an area where a lot of people go to have parties – and we managed to gather a further 15 bags of garbage just from that small area! (Bringing the total collected at The Bight to 42 bags, plus other debris).
Our largest find, the metal frame of a beach umbrella, was a real team effort and took us twenty minutes to dig up. However, that still fell second in value to the wide variety of apparel in Shaquon’s garbage haul! (We could not believe the number of odd, single shoe she found; ultimately, when it came to group photos, after deep consideration, he decided to keep his favourite – the right foot of a pair of flip flops!).
Unless you see it with your own eyes, you really can’t begin to imagine some of the things we found discarded on the beach – and much of it really made us question why people are not taking their stuff away with them when they leave the beach after having their fun.
Meanwhile, down in Blue Hills …
The group of volunteers at Blue Hills was small but mighty! Even with only five students from Year 7 and 8, one parent and two teachers, we still managed to collect more than 20 bags of rubbish, the majority of which was glass bottles. Mrs Haynes gave an inpromptu Biology lesson when we found the skulls of three different dogs, a discovery which definitely freaked out Aaliyah!
And at our Long Bay Beach location …
On Saturday 11th of November, we had a great turnout for the Long Bay region of our schoolǯs beach clean-up. We walked up and down a strip of Long Bay Beach between The Shore Club and the new villas being constructed, and we gathered up to 24 full bags of rubbish. Bottles, tiny pieces of foam, plastic and a very large rope were collected by teachers, parents and students between Year 6 and Year 13. We aimed to create a spotless beach to make up for Coastal Clean-up Day which was missed due to Irma; the job was completed successfully, leaving the beach once again ‘Beautiful by Nature’.
Ella O’Connell
The Student Council is grateful for the large turnout of people for this event; we have shown once again that BWIC continue to demonstrate responsible environmental stewardship of our beautiful islands. Alongside contributing to maintaining a clean environment for us and visitors to TCI to enjoy, (and of course gaining valuable House Points!) the fun we have while we clean up makes the event an enjoyable and worthwhile way to spend a few hours. Well done team BWIC! – and thank you from the Student Council for supporting our initiative.
Darius Coakley, Student Council President