#27 The Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup

Hello again fellow Sprinklers,

So I know I have been ranting and raving a lot lately about how much garbage there is around the rivers in Calgary and I am sure in other cities/provinces too...well I finally put my money where my mouth is and I became a team lead and organized a cleanup for the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup which runs Sept 17th-25th http://shorelinecleanup.ca/ it is country wide and put together by WWF and the Vancouver Aquarium. The stats are impressive from last year: close to 50,000 participants 2200km of shoreline cleaned and close to 12,000 bags of garbage collected! This is the perfect example of what happens when several people pay something forward and how big it can get! The top item picked up last year was cigarette butts (227,830 to be exact) how crazy is that?

Thank you to Dan and Lindsey for being on my clean team on Sept 18th! Together the 3 of us were able to collect a half ton truck full of garbage( about 8 bags) from the Highwood River near Nature's Hideaway Campground. The most interesting find you ask?  A CAMPSITE! Yes that is right we found a tent, pillows, sleeping bags, clothes, food, coolers,  a BBQ and more all left behind by campers right on the rivers edge...it made me sick to think people would leave that much behind and we could tell it had been there for months. Also, to think if our group had not removed it and the next spring when the rivers get higher all of that material would have ended up in the river and really affecting wildlife etc.

It was a fantastic experience and I cannot believe what a difference only 3 of us made (only took 2.5 hours). I guess the disappointing part is thinking about how many people carelessly dumped their garbage and belongings without thinking twice about it...and the worst part is that eventually we could be banned from these beautiful areas because of the idiots (sorry for the lack of a better word) who are too lazy to bring what they brought with them back home again for proper disposal.

If anyone is looking to join a cleanup they will be going until the 25th and you can find all cleanup sites on the website above or you can register a site as well.

In other news, I am going to be really putting a lot of energy into what I can my "Big Project" which are called Sprinkle Bags (bags with items that people can pay forward)...if anyone has any ideas or wants to help please email me at nicole.dundas@hotmail.com or Tweet Me @nickydundas

The Garbage Picker,

Nicky