The King’s Re­lay Ba­ton made its first stop at In­vad­er’s Bay along the Au­drey Jef­fers High­way near St James with a beach clean-up ex­er­cise yes­ter­day.

Host­ed by the Caribbean Net­work for In­te­grat­ed Rur­al De­vel­op­ment (CNIRD), the clean up got un­der­way around 9 am with some 70 per­sons, with the ma­jor­i­ty be­ing stu­dents from the St Bernadette Prepara­to­ry School and St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege.

The par­tic­i­pants gath­ered refuge from the shore­line and sort­ed the trash be­fore weigh­ing their col­lec­tions.

Mem­bers of the CNIRD were on hand to as­sist.

Deputy Act­ing High Com­mis­sion­er of the Unit­ed King­dom to T&T Claire Nichols al­so joined in the en­vi­ron­men­tal ef­fort along with ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of CNIRD Maris­sa Mo­hammed and pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­GA) Di­anne Hen­der­son.

Nichols told Guardian Me­dia Sports the British Con­sulate is elat­ed to be in­volved in the ges­ture.

“The High Com­mis­sion is de­light­ed to sup­port to­day’s clean-up.

“It is a great ho­n­our for Trinidad and To­ba­go to start the King’s Ba­ton Re­lay and it is a great ho­n­our for the UK to be host­ing the Com­mon­wealth Games in Glas­gow (Scot­land) next sum­mer.”

She added, “We are de­light­ed to be here this morn­ing.

“Every­body recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of keep­ing our en­vi­ron­ment clean and main­tain­ing clean oceans and this is all close­ly linked to Com­mon­wealth’s theme of sus­tain­abil­i­ty this year.”

Mo­hammed was al­so thrilled with the ef­forts her or­gan­i­sa­tion have been do­ing to pre­serve the plan­et.

“To­day, we are so hap­py to part­ner with the King’s Ba­ton Re­lay, the Com­mon­wealth Clean Ocean as well as the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion to host to­day’s clean-up.

“We are kick-start­ing the event for the King’s Ba­ton which will be go­ing to 75 coun­tries be­long­ing to the Com­mon­wealth.

“We are al­so hap­py to part­ner with new ini­tia­tives to curb the amount of plas­tics in our shore­lines.”

To­day, the Ba­ton will be tak­en to sev­er­al schools in Trinidad in a car­a­van.

Cou­va An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry, Ex­change RC Pri­ma­ry, St Fran­cis Col­lege and St Patrick’s RC Pri­ma­ry are the ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions on the list.

The King’s Ba­ton ar­rived in the coun­try on Tues­day.

UK High Com­mis­sion­er Jon Mark Dean host­ed a re­cep­tion to com­mem­o­rate the ba­ton’s ar­rival.

T&T’s Ju­do Olympian Gabriel­la Woods ac­cept­ed the King’s Ba­ton on this coun­try’s be­half in the UK be­fore it be­gan its jour­ney.

T&T is the first leg of the 75-coun­try jour­ney the King’s Ba­ton is sched­uled to trav­el to, be­fore the start of the next year’s Com­mon­wealth Games.

St Kitts and Nevis is the next des­ti­na­tion.