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Editorial: Tide has turned in fight to change attitudes about river garbage

Testament to what can be done when a problem is acknowledged and a commitment made to fixing it
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Each year it’s reported that less garbage is extracted from the Cowichan River during the now annual clean-up events that take place in the August.

It’s a testament to what can be done when a problem is acknowledged and a commitment made to fixing it.

Things still aren’t perfect, of course. There is still debris that’s hauled out of the river at the end of every summer. We’d venture to conclude that a lot of it comes from people who come to use the river recreationally during the summer months, and leave a lot more than footprints behind. Tubers discarding their drink cans and food wrappers (and even sometimes their cheap flotation devices) into the river is a perennial problem, as is the problem of those who come to swim or boat and similarly toss their trash into the water. Even when they leave their garbage at the river’s edge, during the winter months when the river swells that trash gets swept downstream, or sinks to the bottom.

Then there are locals, sadly, who also contribute the problem, using the river as a garbage dump for everything from unwanted household items to regular trash. Maybe, like with the travesty of illegally dumping garbage in the bush for someone else to have to deal with, they figure once it’s out of sight it magically disappears. In truth, of course, it rots and pollutes our environment in a way that’s both unpleasant and expensive for everyone.

But evidence (the volume of trash collected) from the annual clean-ups tells an optimistic story. When the event first began, volunteers hauled everything from rusting car bodies to toilets and refrigerators from the river along with thousands upon thousands of cans and everything else you could imagine. Those big items are now few and far between. This is a great trend. And even if you subtract the amount of historical garbage that had been building up in the water for years that was part of the haul from those early clean-up years, the fact that the amount of refuse continues to get smaller each year indicates that the amount of trash being discarded is also getting less and less over time.

And that’s the real victory. Behaviour and attitudes towards the river and what is acceptable are changing. Not overnight, but they are improving with fewer folks feeling like it’s OK to just drop their chip bag or can or defunct curling iron into the water when they’re done with it. The tide has turned.