More than 100 teams and almost 3,000 volunteers of all ages took part in the annual Chamber of Commerce Earth Day Clean-up on Saturday, 27 April.
They collected trash from roadside, beaches, parks and anywhere else where litter had ended up.
Hundreds of bags of the collected trash dotted the sides of local streets, waiting for pick-up by Department of Environmental Health trucks.
The theme of this year’s clean-up was ‘Planet Vs. Plastics’.
In a press release on the clean-up, the Chamber noted, “Plastics do more than litter – they pose a real threat to marine life in our seas and oceans, and microplastics are also an – as yet – unknown risk for human health.”
One young volunteer, 11-year-old Maya Campbell – who worked to pick up trash along Safehaven Drive with the Dart clean-up group, said in the release, “If we don’t take care of our Earth, we’ll soon have no Earth.”
Another young volunteer, 12-year-old Savannah Bodden, was quoted as saying, “If we don’t take care of our Earth, we won’t have one anymore – it will be uninhabitable.”
Chamber CEO Wil Pineau thanked the many sponsors that provided funds, resources and
volunteers for the clean-up.
Among them was the NCB Group, which organised a large team of volunteers.
Kerrilyn Powery from NCB said in the release, “We’re a development and construction company that’s local and we look out for our communities. With sustainability in mind, we want to take care as much as possible of the natural environment and Cayman being what it is, we want to preserve it.”
Whitney Foster, marketing and events coordinator at Cayman Turtle Centre, said that there is always strong support for Earth Day from the centre’s staff.
“We participate every year in the Chamber of Commerce’s Earth Day Beach Cleanup – it’s very important to our values to be out in the community advocating for cleaning up our beaches and protecting our environment because Cayman’s green sea turtle population is at risk from pollution, so it’s a really special opportunity for us to connect with our community, and clean up our beaches together.”
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