Girl Guides help clean shores

Photo: Contributed - Kristin Peturson Laprise

Around 200 members of the Naitaka Girl Guides District took part in the Great Canadian Shoreline Clean Up this past weekend.

This past weekend in cities all across Canada, volunteers got together to make a difference and clean up their natural environment around lakes, rivers and oceans.

The fall sessions of the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup are currently underway, and a group of girl scouts from Kelowna were hard at work on Saturday.

Almost 200 girls and leaders in the Naitaka Girl Guides District, encompassing West Kelowna and Peachland, took part in the community service project and collected nearly 100 pounds of garbage.

The girls spent an hour cleaning up at the Gellatly Nut Farm, Gellatly Bay, Powers Creek and Kalamoir Regional Park.

"We totally lucked out with the heat and the sunshine," said District Commissioner Claire Sokoloski.

"We have participated in the Shoreline Cleanup for the past seven years and this was the biggest attendance ever."

Last year over 99,000 kilograms of litter was removed from 3,035 kilometres of shorelines across Canada.

The shore cleanup began in 1994 with a small team of employees and volunteers at the Vancouver Aquarium, who decided to clean up a local beach in Stanley Park to help protect the city’s shorelines.

Since then, thousands of volunteers have taken part as the program continues to expand.