NEWS RELEASE
GREEN ORILLIA
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Green Orillia is excited to announce this year’s Earth Day Community Garbage Cleanup happening this Saturday, April 22.
Spring is the season of new beginnings, but as snow melts it uncovers garbage and debris. With Earth Day and Yours to Protect Weekend (local groups all over the province hosting events to draw attention to environmental problems) approaching, we thought it the perfect time for a community cleanup.
This will be Green Orillia’s sixth community garbage cleanup event, and the third annual Earth Day cleanup. Our cleanups have grown from a small group of just over 20 people at our first cleanup in 2020 to over 50 people last spring. All are welcome to join, and we hope to beat last year’s attendance record.
Green Orillia will provide bags and gloves, but if you wish to use ‘pickers,’ you must bring your own. All you need to bring is yourself, some water, and proper attire for the weather as we will be going ahead rain or shine.
The focus of the cleanup is city-wide. We will meet at 10 a.m. at Couchiching Beach Park (on the grass in front of the Jarvis Street parking lot), where we will have a community gathering to share information and resources. From there, folks will collect their gloves and garbage bags and set off to an assigned location around the city.
We are trying something a bit different this year, which is to have some volunteers stay back at our headquarters at the park while others are out cleaning. We will have a sorting station so that we can quickly and efficiently sort and organize the bags of garbage as they come in and increase our waste-diversion rate. If you would like to volunteer, please reach out at [email protected].
We are very grateful to our local low-waste market, Refillery District, who has generously donated gift cards for a draw in the past and is doing so again this year. Thank you, Refillery.
It is also important to acknowledge the obvious: the fact that we wouldn’t have so much litter without the production of so many single-use items that need to be disposed of. Litter should be tackled at the source and the real solution is a zero-waste society. Corporations, which are the biggest polluters, need to be held responsible, and we need urgent and robust policy change from all levels of government to make this possible.
You can RSVP to the cleanup on Facebook here.
For those not able to attend, we encourage folks to clean up garbage in their neighbourhood when able and post photos tagging Green Orillia.
Green Orillia is a community organization dedicated to sharing news, events, tips, resources and initiatives for sustainability in Orillia and area. Follow Green Orillia on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for the e-newsletter here, or check out the website.
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