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Cordova Bay students convince restaurants to pull plastic

Every week the students of Lisa Wergeland’s Grade 2/3 class at Cordova Bay elementary make the short trek from the school to Fenn Beach.
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It’s not all garbage, as Soren Sunderland scored a well seasoned piece of blue beach glass at Fenn Beach. Travis Paterson/News Staff

Every week the students of Lisa Wergeland’s Grade 2/3 class at Cordova Bay elementary make the short trek from the school to Fenn Beach.

“We do an activity at the beach but before we do anything, we do a beach cleanup,” Wergeland said.

At the start of the year, the class was inspired by a video on the growing impact of plastics in our oceans.

That started an inquiry into disposable plastics and their negative effect on animals, Wergeland said.

“After learning about this issue they decided we should start by cleaning our local beach and informing people about this problem,” she said.

The class even visited the Hartland landfill and were overwhelmed with the amount of plastic and non-biodegradable garbage that piles up there.

“The plastic in the sea looks like jelly fish and it’s dangerous because they can eat it,” said Grade 3 student Grace Daley. “Certain things eat the plastic and the whole food chain can collapse.”

Earlier this school year the students wrote letters to different businesses and politicians to encourage them to change their disposable plastic uses. Recently, they got their first response and it came from a friendly Cordova Bay neighbour, the Beach House restaurant.

“The Beach House responded and said they will replace plastic straws with [plant-based] biodegradable straws,” Wergeland said. “We were so thrilled.”

Wergeland said the class is now hoping that this will start a long-overdue change in how our local businesses deal with the disposable plastic problem.

“We have permission to use the Beach House name when we approach other businesses,” Wergeland said.

Kate Phoenix, who owns the Beach House, is also swapping in biodegradable products for the plastic types at her two other restaurants, Dog Gone It and Sam’s Deli in Victoria.

“In my position I have a lot to think about and this is something I didn’t think about,” said Patrick Simpson, manager of the Beach House, who visited the students in their classroom. “So thank you for bringing this to my attention, it’s an easy thing to do to make our business greener.”

While the students are learning what difference they can make at the business level, they are also learning another lesson about cleaning up their own neighbourhood.

“One thing we’re finding is that we clean up a lot of garbage from the night before, from what I suspect is young adults having a good time,” Wergeland, said.

“When we clean up there’s beer cans, always beer cans,” said Daley, as she picked through the remains of a beach bonfire. “Yucky.”

reporter@saanichnews.com

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Students collect (Grace Daley in the middle. Names coming.) plastic and other garbage from Fenn Beach on a weekly basis. Travis Paterson/News Staff Every week Selma Paul, Grace Daley and Kaiya Weaver collect plastic and other garbage from Fenn Beach on with their Cordova Bay elementary school class. Travis Paterson/News Staff