Cleaning Kah Tai: Students remove trash for Earth Day

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Local youth activists got hands-on for Earth Day this year, holding a walk-out rally through town before heading to Kah Tai Lagoon in Port Townsend to clean trash and debris in the park.

The student-led environmental advocacy group at Port Townsend High School, Students for Sustainability, coordinated with the school district to do the rally and cleaning event.

“We’re here today because we’re trying to show that it’s our priority to clean up the Earth and that this is what future generations are going to have to be dealing with, with the climate crisis and plastic pollution,” said Sophia Lumsdaine, a high school senior and co-president of Students for Sustainability.

Armed with trash bags, 30-plus students participated in the event by picking up garbage and recyclable materials littered around the lagoon. After an hour of cleaning, the students collected around 500 pounds of trash in honor of Earth Day, according to school staff.

“We had some short, motivational speeches before we came, played music on the way down here. It was good vibes all around here,” said club president Tallulah Sebastian, a sophomore.

With the theme of “Invest in our Earth,” the student-activists marched around town bearing signs ranging from “Don’t Trash Our Future” to “Frack Off Gas-hole” as they advocated for a clean, renewable future for humankind.

“We decided to get a group of students together, young people, to come out and do a walk-out rally from school,” said Camryn Hines, a senior and leader of community outreach for the environmentally friendly club.

“We got as many students as we were able to come down and safely pick up trash and recycling … That’s our goal, is to celebrate and honor the Earth.”

“We went downtown on Sims [Way] and and then came here to Kah Tai,” Lumsdaine said. “This is something we can do today to show what is really important and what we need to do to clean the Earth.”

Students for Sustainability was started by Port Townsend High School students in 2011, and has continued to be a beacon of student activism in the community. The group has met and worked with local and state municipalities — even traveling to Washington, D.C. in 2014 to advocate for the environment — and supports eco-friendly policy to combat climate change. The club recently worked with the city of Port Townsend on a car-idling ban to reduce excessive vehicle emissions in town, with the motion passing in June 2022.

The students also coordinated with Local 20/20 for Car-Free Day last year, with Sebastian designing the logo for the event.

“A lot of us are in AP environmental science and we spent the whole year learning about how our climate is being ruined, and so we feel as young people that it’s our job to come in and clean it up,” Hines said. “We’re young people, we’re the ones inheriting this planet, and we just want to inherit a healthy, clean planet.”

Last year, the student-led club traveled to Olympia to advocate for the WRAP Act — short for the Washington Recycling and Packaging Act — which is designed to cut down on unnecessary product packaging that uses plastic and other non-biodegradable materials.

“We went to Olympia to urge legislators to pass the WRAP Act through the House and the Senate. Unfortunately, it didn’t get passed on to the governor’s desk, but we’re still going to be pushing for responsible solid waste disposal,” Sebastian said.

The club plans to return to the state capitol again this year to push for passing the WRAP Act, members said.

The student-activists will continue coordinating with organizations to advocate for a greener future for local and global youth.

“We work on issues to try to make our school better and our community better, environmentally,” Lumsdaine said.