One of Fenya's university courses has a volunteer component, and as a result, she was required to organize an environmental clean-up this month. Her timetable is pretty full and none of us socialize the way we did last year at this time, so Audrey and I volunteered to join her and Bobby cleaning up a patch of open land off 127th Street near where it meets the Henday.
Fenya picked up garbage bags, picker sticks, high-vis vests and even a sharps collector from Better Environments Canada, which we loaded into the Renegade and drove north to meet Bobby. We disseminated our gear, marched to the target area and were greeted by a field strewn with scraps of plastic, bits of paper and old coffee cups.
Fenya read over the briefing material she had been provided, got us organized, we took some pictures for the 'before' portion of 'before and after', and then got stuck in. Three hours later, we departed, leaving the area significantly tidier than when we'd arrived.
Should you ever find yourself in a similar situation, whether it is due to the goodness of your heart of court-mandated community service, here are some tips that occurred to me over the afternoon.
The Grabby Stick is LIFE
This is by no means a complicated or even truly onerous task, but 30 minutes in, I was grateful for the grabby stick. Having to stoop to pick up the various tiny scraps of decaying matter would have crippled me in all likelihood, and as it was, I was reminded of exactly how sedentary my life has become since beginning to work from home back in March.
They come in two basic styles, one plastic and one metal. The plastic ones may feel like they offer a better grip, but they also require more hand-strength to pull. They are also more brittle, and all three of the plastic variety had broken in some fashion after three hours of use.
Cigarette Butts Are the WORST
Speaking strictly from a trash-picker's perspective, cigarette butts are objectively the devil. They have little to no biodegradability, they are easy to spot, finicky to grab, and there are hundreds of them.
Pro tip: stay away from the roadside - that's where they congregate, presumably as people flick them out their windows willy-nilly, presumably before rolling those windows up once they are on the freeway. Stake your territory out by a stand of trees or row of bushes. This natural windbreak will, tragically, see the accumulation of the most medium-sized and easy-to-grab refuse, with the added motivational bonus of filling your garbage bag far more quickly than, oh, cigarette butts.
Enter the Bushes Rarely and Warily
Approaching one of these stands of bush from the leeward side, Audrey saw a concentration of a variety of types of trash in a tiny clear space at the bottom of a ditch-like incline.
Making her way into this space, she discovered a number of beef-jerky wrappers, an empty package of Dentyne, a box of Durex likewise vacant, and a zip-loc bag full of discarded condom wrappers. Thankfully no soiled prophylactery encounters were had, but Audrey had unmistakenly upended someone's (and I use the term guardedly but also largely literally) love nest.
Maybe it was the afternoon lighting or the methodical and laborious attitude we were working with, and not the furtive horniness of the original inhabitants, but even with my imaginative powers, I could not discern the appeal of this place for its intended purpose. The two competing emotions at the time were actually melancholy and disgust.
The other cautionary note derives from the bushes themselves - when pushing into the underbrush from the windward side to extract some trash that had blown in a ways, Audrey drew her hand back and pointed out that the branch she had her hand on had inch-long thorns on it, like an acacia tree or some such nonsense. I should have taken a picture but I was too busy moving away in a hurry.
Be Prepared for Anything
In addition to the anticipated sandwich wrappers and remnants of disposable cups, we also came across what appears to be a fairly old tire (when did they stop putting "tubeless" on the sides of whitewall tires, I wonder?) and a chunk of rusted metal from what I can only assume is part of an ancient automobile, or perhaps some other type of industrial motor. The latter was only 18 inches across or so but weighted easily in excess of 20 pounds and was studded with tetanus-bearing points of rusted metal but also contained clusters of old style colour-coded resistors.
The frustrating thing about these finds is that they clearly did not arrive here by accident or blow to this spot after ravens or feral cats tore open someone's garbage bag one night. Thanks for nothing, illegal dumpers.
You Can Take Pride in This Work
This was a bit surprising to me, honestly. I mean, I know even a small action like this is good for the environment, and who knows? Maybe someone in one of the hundreds of cars or trucks driving by this afternoon might feel motivated to doing something similar, or at least think twice before throwing a Big Mac wrapper or Iced Capp cup out their window.
But despite spending most of the afternoon as human Roombas, doing the kind of work that is often the lot of prisoners or other societal offenders, it actually was tremendously gratifying to see just how much better that small patch of our city looked when we were finished.
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