Over 350 people cleaned up more than four tonnes of garbage from the Santa Catarina river in San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León, on Saturday.

The event, called 50TON, brought together high school and university students and other residents of the city that neighbors Monterrey to collect all kinds of waste from the river.

The head of the San Pedro Environmental Department, Ada Marcela Ita Garay, said the large number of people who came out emphasizes how the clean-up event is growing.

“More people come each time, but still, we never clean everything because apart from what was already there, we’ve also got what tropical storm Fernand dragged in,” she said.

She stressed that despite the preventative actions and campaigns to encourage the public to reduce and reuse the waste generated in their homes, bad habits continue to wreak havoc on the river.

“Here we’re making a call to the public to be more conscious when consuming products and later disposing of them, and to be more responsible for their waste,” she said.

Saturday’s garbage included tires, paper, plastic bags, Styrofoam, cardboard boxes and even furniture.

A number of local environmental organizations, universities, schools and museums teamed up with the local government to take part in the clean-up.

Source: Milenio (sp)