On Saturday, June 24, we joined AquaVan 150 on their cross-Canada travels and hosted an immensely successful Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup on Petrie Island in Ottawa, in celebration of Canada’s 150th Anniversary of Confederation. In total, 64 volunteers joined us to clean up the island’s shoreline. Volunteers were also treated by the Friends of Petrie Island to a fantastic introduction of the island’s natural ecology, most notably an up close look at some of their resident turtle species. Together, we removed 186 kilograms of litter (roughly the weight of 372 adult female painted turtles). Way to go team! Some of the junk removed included: 271 bottle caps, 39 utensils, six tires, 309 cigarette butts and more than 1,000 tiny plastics. Our 17 bags full of rigid plastics were sent off to TerraCycle Canada’s new Beach Plastic Cleanup Program, to help recycle these hard-to-process items and prevent them from reaching landfill. This year’s most unusual item found was a satellite dish … we’re still wondering what the story behind that one is.