Northumberland County 2nd Annual Mayors' KEEP THE COUNTY CLEAN CHALLENGE

This is about the clean up of litter that gathers in ditches, roadsides, nature trails, any park or public space in Northumberland County. Last spring was my first spring in Grafton and I go out walking every day here, not by choice. I have a dog and I have to walk him everyday at least twice a day otherwise he is out of balance!!
Last spring was my first spring here in Grafton (I was born in Haldimand and happy to come back) and what amazed me on these walks was the amount of litter that is tossed on the ground.


I thought we got past that, people seem to think it is ok to toss anything and everything out of their car or truck out on the planet earth. Honestly, I was beside myself, I have never seen so much plastic in all forms everywhere, I could not go 10' without seeing some form of litter. This is NOT an exaggeration on my part all, although I will admit that I can exaggerate, but I am not about this issue of litter. What I have forgotten is that there are generations that have arrived since my generation and I guess either they or their parents or grandparents seem to think it just fine to toss out those Tim Horton cups with plastic lids, or their fast food take out discards. Nothing disturbs me more than blatant disregard for the very living thing that is our source of life: the planet earth.
 So when last spring arrived, it was clearly evident to me about the amount of pollution scattered at my feet on these walks, I started picking it up. I decided to focus my walk on the Old Danforth Road, which is where I live. I am in the village of Grafton, but the Old Danforth Road continues to the south east of me to connect up to Benlock Road. First I just picked up recyclables, I filled up 3 large bags and put them in my garage, they went out for recycling the following Tuesday. Then I started picking up garbage, I wore gloves and I found many forms of containers on the roadside to put my garbage in. I found a discarded hockey bag, with skate guards and other equipment in it, I found countless garbage bags in ditches, I would simply fill them up and take them home to my garage. I would leave the house and just start picking up with gloved hands.
Then I found a stash of tires, car oil, transmission oil all nicely placed in containers, in a ditch near a water filtering system and right next to fields! My heart breaks when I see this kind of disregard, do these people not have any children or grandchildren? What do they think the future holds for their descendants when they pollute the environment, the water system and fields where crops are grown? Do they not think that maybe there is a link to cancer and the waste they so thoughtlessly pollute our land and water system with? Apparently not.
It was when I had 4 very large bags of garbage in my garage, a location for the tires & oil that I became stressed out about what to do with the tires and the plastic containers of oil. One container holding motor oil was breaking down, eh gads! I called the County about what to do. That is when I found out about The 1st Annual Mayors' "Keep The County Clean" challenge. Whew!  What you can do is you go to your local Municipal Office and register to collect litter from any public place in the County, that means, ditches, roadsides, parks, public trails, the lakefronts (oh the plastic there!!) and any other public space you deem unfit with waste.
So I immediately went to the Grafton Municipal office and registered myself to participate in the clean up, well, I was already doing it and why not have help in getting rid of it all. It was really piling up in my garage and I knew what was left out there I needed a truck for.
This year the Keep The County Clean Challenge runs from April 19 - 24th and is a wonderful idea, I thank the county for this Challenge. I love Northumberland, I grew up here, I have lived here by choice for most of my life because of it's beauty, drumlins, valleys, farms, flora and fauna. To see it desecrated by the tossing out of useless garbage is heartbreaking to me.

Here is what you do to participate:

1. Register at your local Municipal Office, you will get some recycling bags, garbage bags, gloves, a safety vest (which you return) and little flag markers for those tires and other hazardous waste you find. Here is photo of the items I got last year.
Click here for the web page to download a pdf file to see your Municipal locations and phone #'s.

2. Go out vested, gloved and bagged up (bring some more of your own!!), pick your favourite spot in the county and start picking up garbage. If you find just garbage and recyclables you can put them all together in one area - flagged. Hazardous waste such as tires, containers of oil or other such acts of indiscretions you will flag with your markers. I required more flags than I got. I just made several piles of tires and waste then flagged them. Then  you will want to print off a map from google of the area that you cleaned up and mark your waste pick ups clearly so the County can send out the trucks to pick up the waste. It is easy and such a 'Good Thing' to do for your home, your County, where you live.

On top of it this the County of Northumberland is sponsoring the 2nd annual Twenty minute Makeover on April 23rd. This is a challenge to pick up waste on one day, if the other option is too much. Take 20 minutes and go outside of your house and pick up any trash you see out on the roadside near your home. You will be amazed at the difference it can make. No registration is required, wear gloves, head out of doors and recycle what you can. Schools should participate in this challenge. Actually, I think I would think it great if some civic minded citizen's went to the schools to talk about both of these 'Clean Up Challenges'.
Here are photo's of some of my pick up last year for the Mayors' Challenge.
This is a before photo:

 And here is the pile I created with huge sheets of glass, 7 tires, 4 containers of various kinds of motor/transmission oils & one decaying container, plus other refuse. Most of it came from the ditch directly behind where I stacked it.

This is the sign that is on the roadside at the beginning of the summer road for the Old Danforth, this road is used all times of the year by locals, some do not pay attention to the sign!

This is a scattered pile that spilled out of someone's garbage bag they left behind. I found that the red flags even though red were hard to see and so I added some more fabric and a spot of white. Red is a neutral colour and men who are colour blind can not tell the difference between red and green. So I decorated my flags!

Here is more, I ended up finding most of the patio set that went with these table legs, a long slice of garden edging, which I used at a clients house, plus lots more.

In this culvert I found a tire (seems to be a popular roadside drop!), a container of motor oil and a garbage bag with someones household waste in it.

I had only one problem with the whole process and it was the County sent out this Machine from Hell named 'the devil in disguise' by me, as I do not know it's proper name that is what I call it. It is supposed to get rid of trees and shrubs growing along the side of the road. What this machine actually does is propagate invasive weed trees and shrubs, such as European Buckthorn which is on the invasive species list and carries rust and other diseases to farmers crops. By just whacking the hell out of these invasives' all it does is send up a gazillion shoots that have a gazillion more blooms and then more of the berried fruits which means a gazillion more seeds of invasive plants. It also whacked the hell out of some of my garbage piles destined for pick up.
I am making the county aware of this by sending them this blog.
Here are some photo's with the damage done to my garbage pick ups and the creation of more invasive species. This garbage was one pile of garbage to be picked up until the machine from hell came along.
DAH! Who is running this machine, it was quite obvious it was destined to be picked up as it was clearly marked and bagged.

 The photo to the right shows damage done to an invasive European Buckthorn, a huge environmental problem here in the County, as well my red dots show containers of oil that just missed being slashed opened by the machine from hell.
There are safer and friendlier ways to remove and cut back brush from roadsides. I want to employ these safer means and get rid of this hazardous waste creator machine.



 Here below is the 'devil in disguise' as I like call to it or The Machine from Hell.

As I was cleaning up the Old Danforth daily, I did not have time to see what was going on elsewhere. Finally after the last day of clean up I was out driving in my car and what I saw lifted my spirits. People had been cleaning up all over! YES! I know I am nuts about pollution, but we have to be otherwise how could you say we are 'civilized'.