Previous Story
Discarded face masks among trash collected at PDM
The 16 members of the Saipan Awaodori Team and seven staff from Kinpachi Restaurant pose for a picture after picking up 500 lbs of trash in PDM Promoters’ April cleanup of Paseo de Marianas las Saturday. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)
One of the legacies of the COVID-19 pandemic is the preponderance of face masks in every nook and cranny of the island. That’s what volunteers of PDM Promoters experienced last Saturday when they conducted their April monthly cleanup at Paseo de Marianas and its surrounding environs.
“Our volunteers did bush cutting, trimming plants and eliminating tall weeds along Paseo de Marianas, and picking up trash and taking out debris from vacant lots. I just noticed that there’s a lot of used face masks scattered as they were disposed of improperly. I hope our residents would be more responsible and don’t just throw their used face masks in the street and throw them in the trash bins,” said PDM Promoters coordinator Sonia Siwa.
Aside from properly disposing of dozens of face masks, the volunteers—16 members of the Saipan Awaodori Team and seven staff from Kinpachi Restaurant—collected a total of 500 lbs of trash during their two-hour cleanup from 9am to 11am along Paseo de Marianas, Coral Tree Avenue, AMP Road, Beach Road, and its connecting alleyways.
Siwa said last Saturday’s cleanup is only PDM Promoters’ second of the year as their planned activity last month was aborted due to small cluster of positive COVID-19 cases on Saipan.
“We did our volunteer cleanup last Saturday here at the Garapan area together with some members of Saipan Awaodori kids. We were supposed to join the Islandwide Cleanup on April 24 but all the beaches were already adopted by other group volunteers so we proceeded with our cleanup last Saturday,” she said.
PDM Promoters’ monthly cleanups are usually held every Saturday and are supported by the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality and the non-profit’s major sponsors, T-Galleria and TSL Foundation.
Siwa said T-Galleria and TSL Foundation’s support enables them to have the cleaning materials needed for their cleanups. Kinpachi Restaurant, meanwhile, provides meal and snacks for volunteers.
Volunteers of PDM Promoters will be at it again in March when it conducts its second monthly cleanup of 2021.
