WATCH: You won’t believe how much garbage is in Okanagan Lake

April is Earth Month. To mark it, we are sharing some of our past coverage of relative environmental issues.

• Upwards up 20,000 pounds of liter is estimated to be in the lake
• But environmentalists and divers are working to clean up the problem
• There are opportunities for people to help the effort

Imagine three football fields.

Now imagine the green grass covered in trash – everything from cans and bottles to plastic bags, cell phones, wallets, and necklaces.

That’s about how much garbage is assumed to be in Lake Okanagan - roughly 20,000 to 30,000 lbs.

“You could probably load two semi trucks from under the bridge alone,” Ajay Weintz told Kelowna10.

Weintz is a certified scuba diver and launched Mind Over Matter Diving two years ago in the hopes of discovering treasure. Instead, he found heaps of trash and estimates that for every one cool thing you find in the lake, there’s at least 99 pieces of litter.

The trash piles up courtesy of people having picnics on beaches and not paying attention, to people tossing things from their cars and boats.

“The biggest part of the bottles and cans is from the party scene on the lake,” Weintz said. “There’s a lot of boaters who throw their bottles and cans in the water and think it’s out of sight, out of mind.”

Far from harmless, Weintz has had to break open drink containers to free trapped fish. He’s even seen kids cut their feet on broken glass while preparing for dives.

After seeing how much garbage was in the lake, Weintz dedicated his time to bringing waste ashore to be disposed of properly. On regular dives he’s able to bring back 50 to 100 lbs after an hour underwater.

He said this time of year is a double-edged sword for underwater collection as the water is clear, but the cold temperatures limit how long divers can remain there.

He and others hope to get the message across that there’s a shocking litter problem in the Okanagan and it is having a negative impact on our environment.

Kolby Corbett owns the Sustainable Stoner, a print-on-demand apparel site that uses recycled and sustainable fabrics. Her first reaction to seeing improperly discarded trash in Kelowna is, ‘why?’

“We have so many options to be sustainable. Why don’t we take those tools and use them to our advantage,” she said. “And secondly, what can I do?”

Going for hikes, she brings a plastic bag to collect litter on the trail and hopes to encourage others to do the same.

Sustainable Stoner and Mind Over Matter Diving began collaborating on collection events to tackle the litter problem both on land and underwater.

Corbett and Weintz plan on future collection events in the fall and invite the public to join the effort.