Barbados Today

Some beaches in the north of the island received a spruce up last weekend, compliments the Barbados International Costal Cleanup group.

The beaches benefitting were River Bay and Moontown in St Lucy and Heywoods and Six Men’s, St Peter.

The Barbados group was assisted by an overseas group from Ocean Conservancy which also observed the cleanup methods. They were joined by members of the Barbados Defence Force who helped with the cleanup at River Bay.

National coordinator for the group and the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN) Sade Deane said it was great having the Ocean Conservancy team visit, as there was a lot the Barbados group could learn from them.

“Ocean Conservancy who are the lead coordinators globally for the international coastal cleanup . . . visited Barbados to see the model that we have for the cleanup here. They have been here since September 30 and are departing October 3. They are our support system. We speak to them about any issues and new implementations for cleanup, they usually introduce us to that,” Deane explained.

She said another purpose of the cleanup was to identify trends in the type of garbage being left on the beaches.

“We are categorizing the data, documenting the types of data that we find so we have an idea of what kind of garbage we are finding and when we put all the data together we can see what are the trends,” Deane added.

She added that the aim is to clean up 50 beaches as the island celebrates its 50th Anniversary of Independence next month.