Nine toi­let bowls were among over 3,000 pounds of garbage re­moved from Scot­land Bay last week­end, dur­ing an In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Clean-up Day Beach Clean Pump host­ed by non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) Green Cir­cle En­vi­ron­men­tal Com­pa­ny.

From 6 am, the NGO, head­ed by Ker­rie-Kim Kir­ton and in­clud­ing 238 vol­un­teers, ven­tured “Down the Is­lands” and cleaned Scot­land Bay.

This was the sixth an­nu­al event and 167 bags of garbage weigh­ing 3,267 pounds were re­moved from the is­land.

In­ter­na­tion­al Coastal Clean-up Day is the largest clean-up dri­ve for beach­es and coast­lines. It was first cel­e­brat­ed in 1986 and is ob­served on the third Sun­day every Sep­tem­ber.

The teams cleared 1,456 pounds of glass, 544 pounds of plas­tic and 1,267 pounds of gen­er­al waste, in­clud­ing 1,643 plas­tic bot­tles, 2,098 glass bot­tles and 1,145 cans.

“Every time we come to Scot­land Bay, we hope to have a dif­fer­ent re­sult... We hope to meet a clean­er beach and we hope to col­lect less garbage than we did in the past year...Un­for­tu­nate­ly, each year, the op­po­site is true,” Kir­ton said.

He said he hopes every­one takes per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves and their sur­round­ings in fu­ture, tak­ing back with them what they use.

“I be­lieve we can do bet­ter...Each of us has the pow­er to make our world a bet­ter, green­er place ... Every lit­tle bit goes a long way,” he said.

The en­vi­ron­men­tal NGO, which un­der­takes ini­tia­tives that pro­mote en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty events with a pur­pose and where young adults get in­volved in eco-friend­ly ac­tiv­i­ties, had help from com­pa­nies such as the Massy Foun­da­tion, Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion and oth­ers.

Groups like Punchy Punch, South is Love, Mar­itime, Bry­dens and the Ro­taract Club of Cen­tral Diego Mar­tin, Massy Group, Cae­sar’s Army, Tribe and the UTC gath­ered ear­ly in the morn­ing, head­ed to Scot­land Bay, cleaned the beach and re­turned to the main­land.

In the Green Cir­cle’s six years of ex­is­tence, it has re­moved 1,925 pounds of trash in 2019, 3,364 pounds in 2018, 4,117 pounds in 2017, 2,200 pounds in 2016 and 1,450 pounds in 2015.