Greg Roedel cleans up beaches. He also pays his way through school, works full time and attends night classes at DU’s school of real estate and construction management.

Roedel, a graduate student, Bill Valaika, a DU alumnus and undergrads Lindsey Schaeffer and Sam Sokel work with Habitat Healers. Habitat Healers is an organization dedicated to cleaning up ecosystems around the globe. Valaika founded the organization and enlisted real estate and construction management majors Roedel, Schaefer and Sokel to volunteer with the organization. Habitat Healer volunteers clean up areas and build community stations to continue recycling process in places that do not have reliable waste management services.

“I wanted to contribute and see new parts of the world,” said Roedel. “You see the need and opportunity to effect positive change in different places [through Habitat Healers].”

His goal is to go on one ecological mission a year, a commitment which he admits has been both challenging and fulfilling.

Roedel, Schaeffer and Valaika will be travelling to Costa Rica Nov. 8 through Nov. 15 to facilitate beach cleanup by groups of volunteers. They will be travelling through different jungle and beach locations picking up trash and building sustainable waste receptacles from materials, like bamboo, found on the beach. Global Vision Initiative, a partner corporation, works with Habitat Healers to send volunteers around the world, concentrating mainly in Latin America.

The three-mile-long stretch of beach where the Habitat Healer volunteers will be working is the location of the second most populous gathering of sea turtles in the world. The trash on the beach, ranging anywhere from ankle- to knee-deep, has negatively affected the lives of many animals who interact with the beach ecosystem.

“People have no idea how bad these beaches look,” Roedel said. “You can’t see the sand.”

The amount of trash threatens the wildlife and surrounding ecosystem. Many endangered species, like the marine turtles, need a clean beach in order to survive. Beach debris comes mostly from cruise liners, fishing boats and the local population. The locals contribute to the problem because there is a lack of adequate places to dump their trash and recycle materials.

“This stretch of beach has never been cleaned in the twenty years of its status as a Costa Rican national park,” Valaika said. 

The effort by Habitat Healers will be the first to clean this beach, as well as others in more than 120 different locations around the world.

Valaika, Roedel and Schaeffer will decide what their next project and location will be after the Costa Rica trip.

 “We will wait and see what goes well and what doesn’t during Costa Rica, and then plan from there,” said Valaika.

  They will continue to use the resources of the Global Vision Initiative, www.gvi.co.uk, as well as any donations or volunteers who want to become involved with Habitat Healers.