WHAT WE DO AND WHY
We pick up other People's litter.
It all started in March 2009, when after a long dreary winter I felt the need to get out more and started walking with my step-mother on our local rural roads. In 2007, at 58 years of age, I battled breast cancer. In 2008 I reassembled myself and gathered energies lost to chemo and radiation. By 2009 I was ready to become active again. We started walking, short walks to build my strength, my walking companion and stepmother was already an avid hiker with the Acton Senior Centre.
My 82 year old stepmother and I, live on her 10 acres in Southern Ontario, Canada, on what is
part of the Niagara Escarpment. The Niagara Escarpment is one of 12 UNESCO
biosphere reserves in Canada. The property we live on is about 1/4 house and
garden and ponds with lots of mature cedars. The rest 3/4 is comprised of fairly undisturbed forest
wetland and a small meadow-like field on a hill. The area abounds in
wildlife, but, and there is a but, it is not like it was some 40 years ago
when when my father and she moved here from the town of Acton.
Image of one of our many frogs. We do what we do
partly for them. © Maianna 2009
It would be nice to keep what is left of nature here healthy and vital.
Of course we have seen the litter on the side of the road when driving to town, but the amount we saw in the ditches on our first half mile walk was staggering. A few days later we brought some old plastic bags and did the same walk. Within a few hundred feet on one side on one side of the road we'd filled the bags. Next time, same walk, we brought each two large shopping bags and filled them without finishing the intended walk of a half mile. It took several more walks and a few trips with the car to get all the trash on that short stretch.
IMAGES FROM THOSE FIRST FEW DAYS
 Here,
10 feet from the road,
at the edge of a forest wetland area, someone had dumped several
bags filled with household garbage: plastic bottles; diapers;
plastic bags; cans; |
 My
step-mother, Thora Hallas Jespersen picking up the debris seen in the
image above a few days later. |
 The
"haul" from one day on the same short stretch of road. |
 Yet
another few days of collecting on the same 1/2 mile stretch yields this. In this image
the trash is sorted into: two containers of returnable items, one
recyclable and two bags of landfill trash. |
It took many days before we could do the whole half mile stretch in one trip. Mostly we'd fill up our bags to capacity and leave a stretch untouched. Twice, on this short stretch, we fetched the car to bring home larger pieces of trash and full green garbage bags.
It started a habit for the two of us of going out for half an hour in one direction and half an hour coming home every few days. Then we coerced our neighbour, Linda Skoropad, into coming out with us on some of our garbage excursions. I thought, as we walked the ditch, that if everyone could "Have a Green Heart" all this trash wouldn't be there.
Then I started a Facebook group (Please feel free to join). Soon my brother's mother in-law voiced her desire to come out with us. I found some chartreuse green t-shirts in our local Giant Tiger store and bought up the lot, they were on sale 100% cotton. When we wear them and all look the same we feel less conspicuous picking up the garbage.
We've had people biking by thanking us, cars honk and wave, neighbours stop and ask what we are doing and thank us, one neighbour, insisted on us coming into his house for coffee and a snack and said that he and his children would do a stretch of the road as well. It is spreading, albeit slowly, but surely.
Our area, like many communities has a once a year, springtime voluntary roadside pick-up. A lot of people come out and do their bit. At the end of the day green garbage bags line the ditches waiting to go to landfills. It is better than doing nothing by far, but a few weeks later the debris starts collecting in the ditches again ... Littering just have to stop. It is of detriment to the health of our planet. Plastic cups and bottles and coffee lids NEVER biodegrade, they just break down into smaller and smaller pieces.
I know that one person CAN make a difference, two can make a larger difference and a group of people can make the world of difference.
Join us please: Pick up litter now and then, or often; Say no to plastic bags and containers whenever you can and never, ever litter.
Through-out these pages are ideas for simple things that everyone can do be part of the whole and make a difference.
Links on this page:
Wikipedia: The Niagara Escarpment