The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in collaboration with Guybernet and regional community development groups in Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo successfully carried out a data collection and clean-up activity along Guyana’s shorelines and coastal waterways.

According to an EPA  release, the activity took place at No. 63 and Rose Hall beaches in Berbice; Kingston, Uitvlugt and Cornelia Ida in Demerara; and Dartmouth and Charity on the Essequibo Coast.

The clean-up activity was extended for the first time to all three counties as part of a public awareness strategy being implemented by the EPA.

The exercise evolved from the International Coastal Clean-Up

(ICC), an international environmental observance slated for the third Saturday of September each year. The clean-up in different coastal regions is intended to become an annual event that is expected to gain momentum in the future.

In Guyana, like in other countries around the world, marine litter is a growing threat to the marine and coastal environment, the EPA noted.

In addition, it poses economic, health and aesthetic problems, severely affecting wildlife and threatening the integrity of Guyana’s coastal and marine ecosystems.