Students from Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School rolled up their sleeves, pulled on their gloves and spent the morning picking up trash around 100 Mile House on April 24.
One group of Grade 9 students, on their way back to the school, displayed the full bags of garbage they’d collected around town.
They said they were surprised to see how much litter was around.
“You don’t really realize how much there is until you are actually picking it up. There’s a lot more than it looks,” says Halle Guimond.
“We thought that it wasn’t going to be a lot.”
“Normally you’re driving down the highway and it looks like a decently clean town. You go to some areas and it’s not really clean,” says one of the other students, Nicole Gervais.
Teachers on Monday morning had the option of sending their students out around town in honour of Earth Day, which fell over the weekend, on April 22.
The group said that Earth Day and picking up trash was a good reminder to take care of the Earth.
“The Earth needs to be cleaned up,” says Antonio Valihora.
“We all live in this world and we all need to participate in keeping it clean,” says Gervais.
“It’s important to keep our community and our world clean,” added Guimond.
“We only have one Earth. We should be trying to fix it not mess it up,” says Vailhora.
Earth Day is an annual event, held on April 22, to show support for environmental protection.
It was first celebrated in 1970 and can now be observed in more than 193 countries.
