Willows Beach gets beauty treatment from Green Team

The Greater Victoria Green Team cleans Willows Beach with Oak and Orca School.

The group of 21 students and teachers from Oak and Orca Bioregional School as well as 5 community members picked up 30 pounds of garbage.

“They spent 3 hours exploring all of the nooks and crannies of the beach searching for litter of all sizes,” said Amanda Evans, program manager for Greater Victoria Green Team. “Most of the garbage we found included cigarette butts, small pieces of styrofoam, straws, plastic bits, and weird things like a knife, a few pairs of socks, plus a few items we actually turned into the lost and found - a new pair of shoes and nice sunglasses!”

The group utilized the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup resources to keep track of what they picked up. This data will be entered into the national database on the website that keeps track of beach cleanup information.

The Greater Victoria Green Team has been busy at work throughout Oak Bay since August 2014 and has engaged 473 volunteers including 116 youth volunteers, and accumulated a total of 1133 volunteer hours in the community.

They’ve organized 27 stewardship activities in eight Oak Bay sites – Anderson Hill Park, Brighton Walkway, Bowker Creek Monteith Street, Bowker Creek Oak Bay Highschool, Cattle Point/Uplands Park, Harling Point, Willows Beach and Gonzales – revitalizing 3,330 square meters of habitat, removing 157 cubic meters of invasive plants and picking up 167 pounds of garbage from the beaches.

The Program Manager, Amanda Evans, believes that fostering a connection between people and nature is vital to the health and well-being of our planet.