Cleaning the Environment

It all started when I was visiting my baba (grandpa) in Tracadie in May. He lives next to the ocean, so I went for a walk to look at the water. That's when I saw all the trash on the side of the ocean. Luckily there was a bucket, so I used that to clean up the bags and bottles that were stuck in the sand.

After supper, I made my sister help me, we filled a garbage bag in 20 minutes. It was primarily ketchup packs, coffee covers, fast food packaging, a lot of plastic bags and other small pieces of plastic. It broke my heart. I realized that down the road there was a Tim Hortons and McDonald's, which is why this section of the beach was littered in fast food packaging.

This made me want to help in other ways and I think the universe understood because I kept seeing clean up events in Fredericton. I also saw that there was an ocean clean up in Saint-Andrews.

Here is what I've learnt from my clean up events. THE HUMAN CIVILIZATION IS DISGUSTING. We must stop consuming the way we are consuming. I cleaned the ocean sides and there is so much trash that completely shocked me. Trash by our water ways will end up floating around and it will ruin our earth. It kills ocean life and without them, we don't have a livable ecosystem.

When I cleaned Fredericton, we followed the path system and there wasn't that much trash. Which was great, but I have seen trash randomly in parking lots like Winners and more along the highways. It's really hard to ignore when you are aware of it.

My biggest takeaway was: If you are ignorant about the planet, you are ignorant about life and how nature works. We cannot keep accepting that people throw trash out of their windows, we cannot accept that our oceans are filled with trash.

Just because something looks good, doesn't mean it is. If you look a little closer, you will see how bad it has gotten. We must reduce our consumption of plastic and non-renewable sources. We must find ways to love that help the environment instead of working agains't it.

Just because we've always lived a certain way, doesn't mean we continue living like it.

I encourage everyone to attend a clean up event, or bring a trash bag to the beach the next time you are there to aid in the clean up of our lives.

Thanks for reading,

Samantha