How our ‘use’ of Laurentian Beach has become ‘abuse’
by Carissa Holliday
When the end of summer comes around, the students of Laurentian don’t let the memories die down.
During Frosh Week, the Students’ General Association (SGA) promotes the use of Laurentian’s beach by holding their yearly “Beach Day” – filled with live music, volleyball tournaments and diving off the rocks into Nepahwin Lake.
Not a lot of universities in Canada have the convenience of featuring a beach on campus, and it certainly is something the University as a whole is lucky to have.
But what one might find on a walk out to the beach this time of year isn’t a pristine stretch of bush and water, it’s the results of carelessness towards cleaning up and not disposing of waste properly.
I was swimming at the beach near the end of August, and I had to watch where I was walking around the rocks because of remnants of glass embedded in the sand.
Cans are floating in and around the water typically following the Beach Day, and up on the bluff, where you can catch some of the best sunsets that Laurentian should be made famous for, there are chip bags huddled underneath tree branches, and garbage and more cans just hanging out. It’s truly unbelievable.
Sudbury has developed a far more attractive look from where it initially came from – from barren rocks and lifelessness to blossoming with life and trees, all because of the efforts of this community.
Being so close to the Laurentian Conservation area, which is 2,400 acres of untouched territory, you’d think Laurentian University would be a constant promoter of waste reduction and good environmental practices.
During Welcome Week this year, I was pleased to see that the SGA hosted a tree planting day. That was certainly an effort. But we have to make a little more of a push for mindful practices to be reflected in the way our students and staff care for the premises.
Laurentian has an Office of Sustainability, according to their website, and the department pushes “to assist in finding solutions to the challenges of environmental sustainability; to share knowledge about sustainability and climate change; and to incorporate, wherever possible, principles of sustainability into our own operations.”
This is exactly the kind of thing Laurentian needs, an organization that tries to push environmental sustainability into the lives and future of each and every person on campus. But upon looking at their website, I was able to find that after a recent cell-phone recycling drive in 2016, the organization has remained fairly inactive.
Yes, these forms of movements take so much effort to keep in motion, but in the end, they are worth it. They can instil so much influence on how mindful we are of where we live, and can change the way we live for the better of the planet.
In writing this article, I’m not looking to point fingers at specifically anyone when it comes down to who has created this mess – I’m pointing at everybody to say we should all choose to take our turn in helping to clean up.
Laurentian needs to host more clean-up days, more recycling drives, and form even more environmental initiatives and clubs. I’m not saying it’ll make that big of an initial impact, but it’ll be a start. Let’s give Laurentian students another reason to be proud to be a “Voyageur” – by cleaning up the beach.