Wildsight’s Community Cleanup was held on Earth Day, Saturday Apr. 22 and according to branch manager Andrea Chapman, it was a huge success this year.
“I think we had over 100 people,” Chapman said, adding that overall there seemed to be less garbage strewn about than in years past.
Volunteers gathered at the Civic Centre at 10 a.m. and were given their area to tackle. The highway into town near Meadowbrook, which wasn’t cleaned up last year, was one particular hotspot for trash this year.
“There was some spots, like Townsite stairs was brutal, around the high school stairs. There are some spots that are always bad that we do every year and they just never get better,” Chapman explained.
The biggest culprits this year were cigarette butts, beer cans, alcohol bottles and trash thrown from cars on the highway.
Some weird stuff also usually shows up at these cleanups, and this year was no exception, as volunteers brought in a sizable chunk of someone’s car that’s now in their metals bin.
This year Wildsight had a lot of partners to support the cleanup. GFL dropped off the big dumpster for free for garbage. Secure Energy out of Marysville brought the metals bin and will take that back for free. Liberty Tire is also taking away tired that were collected.
The City of Kimberley also provided a huge supply of garbage bags for the volunteers to use and high-vis vests provided last year by D&B Flagging and Traffic Control were left over.
“Almost everything was provided for free, we didn’t have to buy anything,” Chapman said.
This was the second year of Wildsight’s Community Cleanup, with the City of Kimberley running their Clean Sweep for many years previously. Chapman said she loves organizing it as she gets to see how much the community embraces it and their desire to get involved.
“I love to see all the different partners and groups and businesses getting involved,” she said. “We’re talking about the Beaver Scouts and the Rotary and Kootenay Savings and a lot of teams from the community came together all through the week to do this stuff and they care. We care in Kimberley so I like being a part of seeing that happen.”
Wildsight’s next event is their pruning clinic on Saturday, April 29. This coincides with their Apple Capture program and they encourage people to prune their trees to make the fruit produce better and to make it safer to pick.
Their Farmers Market will be starting up in June.
paul.rodgers@kimberleybulletin
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