Dance are learning.

In Motion instructors, students and parents teamed up with Keep Bermuda Beautiful (KBB) for the schools third annual Trash-a-thon at Bernard Park on Palmetto Road.

The Trash-a-thon helps the In Motion students raise money for costumes to be used for their May recital.

"We have (the Trash-a-thon) for three reasons,'' said In Motion owner and director Liz Pimental. "The first is to help parents out with the cost of the costumes.

"Eight dollars is a lot of money to spend on costumes the kids are probably only going to wear once.'' She went on to say that the second reason for the Trash-a-thon was to get all the students, parents and teachers of In Motion together for a group activity.

"We are all busy in our own classes trying to get ready for the recital,'' she said. "This gives us an opportunity to get the different classes together and the parents involved.'' Miss Pimental also hoped the Trash-a-thon would help to build a little environmental awareness in her students.

"The third reason we do the (Trash-a-thon) is because we all know we have a litter problem on the Island,'' she said. "And we all have to do our part to keep the Island clean.

"If we can get our little ones to realise that they have to do they part in keeping the Island clean, them maybe it's something they will take with them into adulthood.'' Working with KBB means every piece of trash collected had to be catalogued and recorded.

Miss Pimental was appalled at the amount of trash that was picked up this year.

"We have done this for three years. I thought there couldn't be that much trash this year,'' she said. "I was amazed at how much there was considering the dump is right there.'' The most unusual find for the day was a bag of still chilled cabbages. In total, In Motion collected 3,212 items of trash from the park compared to last year's 5,310 items of trash.

But Miss Pimental said that considering there is a clean-up crew assigned to that area her students still found a lot of garbage.

Trash for dancing: Students of the In Motion School of Dance got an environmental lesson as they cleaned up Barnard Park on Palmetto Road as part of third annual Trash-a-thon to help raise money for recital costumes.