Stephen Vance, Editor
After a long, cold, then warm, snowy, then not, winter, the first hints of true Spring weather appear to be just around the corner. The snow that accumulated over the past few months is nearly gone, revealing lawns and sidewalks – and of course, more trash than any of us would like to see.
For some reason we humans are prone to discarding inconvenient items in convenient (for us) places – wrappers on the sidewalks, bottles on the beach, cans floating in the river, broken air conditioners tossed in ditches.
It can be easy to forget just how messy we are, when for several months everything is covered in a thick layer of snow, but the spring melt shines a bright light on our terrible addiction to generating waste, and our apparent disdain for trash bins by enough of us to make the early days of April an ugly mess indeed.
Our waterside parks with their sandy beaches, lush grass, shady trees, and beautiful views are certainly not immune from the seemingly insatiable need for humans to make a mess.
For the past six years, The Meaford Independent has sponsored and hosted an annual clean-up of Memorial Park: this year, on April 24, we will host our seventh clean-up of the park.
Memorial Park is not just a beautiful place to relax, it is also one of the few municipally-owned and -operated facilities that actually pays for itself, and it greets and hosts visitors from far and wide, so the better it looks and the cleaner it is, the more attractive it is to campers.
The first two Earth Day clean-ups at the park attracted a dozen or so volunteers who spread out across the park with trash bags in their work-gloved hands to collect the trash that others had left behind. The piles of trash collected in those early clean-ups were large, and some of what was found by the volunteers was cause for some head-scratching.
Rolled-up carpets, small appliances, mattresses, chairs (both lawn and living room), and large pieces of metal – purpose unknown – added to the already large piles of green garbage bags gathered by the volunteers.
In those days there were no supporting Earth Day (or now, Earth Week) events taking place in the municipality. It is with some pride that I say that the Memorial Park clean-up started all those years ago has helped to stimulate other Earth Day initiatives, and in recent years that has snowballed into a full week of eco-friendly activities and initiatives in this community.
In the last few years, the clean-up event has become more of a social gathering – attracting some 50 volunteers – than a dirty, labour-intensive clean-up. You might think that 50 volunteers are going to gather far more trash, from a wider area, than a dozen volunteers, however the previous years of cleaning up the park on Earth Day have meant that, while a modest pile of trash bags accumulates throughout the day, gone are the mountain-sized piles of trash, and also gone are the home furnishings and appliances.
Less trash in the park doesn’t mean that we don’t want as many people as possible to join us again this year on Sunday, April 24 from 1 – 3 pm at Memorial Park. In recent years, less trash has meant that our volunteers can also focus on invasive plant species, and general care for the park. Less trash has also meant more time for the volunteers to enjoy some warm apple cider and snacks, great conversations, and a lot of laughs.
If you’ve joined us for the previous Earth Day clean-ups at Memorial Park, we look forward to seeing you again. If you haven’t, we’d love for you to come out, enjoy the fresh air, and help take care of a gem of a park. All you have to bring along are some gloves and a smile.
We look forward to seeing you there!
