While officially Earth Day wasn’t until Monday, volunteers brought their energy to clean up  to Conimicut Point Park as the skies began to clear on Saturday afternoon.

About half of the 42 volunteers were  from Infosys- a technology company in Bengaluru, India with offices in Providence.. Zakeer Shaik, a program manager with the company,  said the cleanup was one of multiple volunteer activities that Infosys does as part of their Infosys Foundation USA program.

Shaik said he has taken part in cleanups around the city for the past eight years, when he first moved to Warwick. Doing volunteer cleanups with his son and daughter through their schools, he said, got him interested in doing more community events.

“In school, we used to come along with them on their volunteer activities to nearby beaches to do this,” Shaik said. “And now, we have a team.”

Convincing coworkers and their families to come to the cleanup, Shaik said, was not hard.

While Shaik said that Earth Day had a special significance to him, making sure that his local communities were clean was something that was important to keep in mind every day of the year.

“In our homes, we do the cleanup, right?” Shaik said. “It’s the same way in society. You have to have a regular cleaning. You have to take care of our air and resources, whatever we are getting naturally.”

Conimicut Point’s cleanup was one of several organized by Save the Bay over the weekend leading up to Earth Day, with others held the following day at Salter Grove and Oakland Beach, according to Save the Bay Volunteer and Internship Manager July Lewis.

The Conimicut Village Association and Save the Bay cleanup resulted in 167 pounds of trash from the park and beach.

According to John Paul, a board member of the CVA, the Earth Day cleanup is part of ongoing cleanups throughout the year.

 “We didn’t get a tire last year; we didn’t get a tire this year,” Paul said. “We used to get a tire- more than one tire- every single week.”

There was, however, one troubling trend that Paul noticed. Amongst the trash were 12 hypodermic needles- the most picked up in a single day.

Paul has conducted cleanups at Conimicut Point since 1996, when he first moved to the village. While they used to be annual, he said he has since ramped up the number of cleanups to as many as one every couple of weeks.

Paul said that the 42 total volunteers who showed up on Saturday was a “great” number. He had been aiming for between 30 and 40, which he said was a good number to have for any cleanup.

According to Paul, Conimicut Point’s next cleanup will be on May 11 from 2 to 4 p.m.

“People want to help make this park be a better place for everyone to go to,” Paul said. “That’s what really makes this a great place. Everybody’s trying to put their best foot forward and participate.”