Posted: Dec 22, 2020 9:00 AM NT | Last Updated: January 3 comments
Nancy Pearson picks up a bag (or two) of litter each day on Black Bank Beach, as well as organizing community clean up days, and posts about her progress on Instagram.(Submitted by Nancy Pearson)
A daily beach walk, soaked in gorgeous scenery of Newfoundland s west coast, sounds like the ideal tonic to 2020.
But the modern world is impossible to leave behind on Nancy Pearson s strolls along Black Bank Beach, near Stephenville Crossing. She began her treks six years ago, when she moved home after decades away to find her childhood sandy playground awash in indestructible residue: plastic.
Dec 18, 2020 7:31 AM
The Multi-Materials Stewardship Board has released some startling statistics about the amount of litter on the province’s beaches.
The 2019 Coastline Litter Audit covered 30 sites across the province.
When analyzed with a similar study of roadside trash from 2016, it was estimated that there are over 200 pieces of litter per capita on roadsides and coastlines in the province.
In total, over 3,200 pieces of garbage were found along the beaches, 69 per cent of which were plastic. The area with the highest litter count was Newman’s Cove, in the Discovery Region, while the area with the lowest count was Pinware River Provincial Park in Labrador.