With the winter snow now gone, and the sand and grit on our roads and sidewalks slowly being swept away, we find ourselves in the midst of Earth Week. But with all the chaos taking place around the globe these days, Earth Week seems to have taken a back seat this year, in the hype department at least.
This year’s Earth Week runs from April 17 through April 25, and the theme this year is ‘Invest in Our Planet’. As always, the goal of Earth Week is to get people thinking about the world around them through an environmental lens, and for communities to engage in environmental activities that help to raise awareness about sustainability and our changing climate, as well as improving, even if in a small way, the communities in which we live.
In our modern, polarized world, simply uttering the word ‘environment’, or the phrase ‘climate change’, can raise the hackles of some, and can even start some pretty intense debate. My personal perspective is that whether you believe the overwhelming consensus of scientists who say that our climate is indeed changing and that we humans have had a hand in this changing climate, or if you think that the very notion of climate change is a hoax or some sort of conspiracy, I think one thing we can all agree on is that a cleaner community is a better place to live than a trashy community. So at the very least, even to the most ardent opponents of what some might refer to as ‘climate change ideology’, community clean-up events are welcomed by most. Who doesn’t prefer to be surrounded by a clean environment void of discarded coffee cups and fast food bags?
In some years Earth Day and Earth Week have received much hype, with local governments, community groups, and volunteers hosting a range of events and activities. This year however I have seen very little promoting Earth Day, especially locally. In addition to the at times overwhelming global chaos that we have been experiencing in recent months, a chilly month of April might also be a contributing factor to this year’s low-key Earth Week.
Environmental concerns have been top of mind for many who have submitted letters to the editor to this newspaper over the past few years, as the community has grappled with the hydro-electric pumped storage facility proposed by TC Energy to be built on our local military base. For those concerned about protecting our local environment, the coming environmental impact studies will be closely watched and hotly debated in the coming years.
One of the more common observations of Earth Week are community clean-up initiatives, which, while only really dealing with relatively superficial environmental concerns, and offering little in the way of guidance with regard to sustainability, those community clean-ups are a great place to start raising awareness, and also to bring the community together to work toward a common goal that makes life a little better for everyone.
I have long been a supporter and promoter of community clean-up events. For eight years, between 2010 and 2018, this newspaper along with the Friends of Memorial Park hosted an annual Earth Week clean-up of Memorial Park. Dozens of volunteers would arrive at the park in the morning, spend a couple of hours picking up trash throughout the park, followed by some warm cider and chats with friends and neighbours.
Our last Memorial Park Earth Week Clean-up was held in 2018 for a number of reasons. The primary reason was that the Rotary Club started their own community-wide clean-up in early May of 2018, and it has continued to grow each year. So we discontinued our Memorial Park clean-ups, as the community-wide event would capture the park, not to mention the fact that, while in the early years we were pulling large amounts of trash from Memorial Park, including old air conditioners, dehumidifiers, rolled up carpets, along with the traditional and (sadly) as expected numerous Tim Horton’s coffee cups, in the later years our volunteers would find very little to collect. It seemed that once the park was brought up to snuff, people were less likely to litter in the park.
Trash on our sidewalks, ditches, and in our parks is frustrating for most of us. Overflowing garbage cans in our parks, plastic pop bottles washing up on our shores, fast food packaging littering our trails. Trash is everywhere, and while we can shrug our shoulders and blame others, littering is just part of the problem.
Not every coffee cup, newspaper, or food container found on a sidewalk or in a park playground is the result of irresponsible people littering, some of it was in a blue bin at the curb before windy weather blew some of it around, depositing bits of paper and plastic in places we’d rather be neat and tidy.
If you do enjoy joining others to observe and act upon the Earth Week spirit, a couple of weeks after Earth Week, when the weather will (hopefully) finally be a little more comfortable for spending time outdoors, the Rotary Club of Meaford will once again host their annual ‘Baggy’ Day on Saturday, May 10, starting at the harbour pavilion at 10 a.m.
For those looking for something to do this weekend related to the observation of Earth Week, you can head to the Owen Sound & North Grey Union Public Library where you will find a number of Earth Week events taking place as part of Earth Week Grey Bruce.
While the events held this week and over the weekend will have referenced ‘Earth Day’, or ‘Earth Week’, as I mentioned above, I know that for some, those very words can be a source of irritation, as the politics surrounding the concept of ‘Earth Day’ can be very polarizing. ‘Earth Day’ has been observed for more than 50 years now, and the topic of environmental issues has become a political hot potato these days, a topic that can be as contentious as religion or politics. I can’t blame folks for experiencing ‘environmental exhaustion’, as with each new day it can seem as if there is a new environmental issue for us to worry about, and the endless debates about the topic on social media can certainly wear one out.
But having a clean community with clean ditches and parks, after carelessly discarded trash is collected by enthusiastic members of the community, is something that nobody should complain about.
