A grassroots online movement to encourage people to help clean up their neighbourhoods continues to grow.
Nova Scotia ONE Garbage Bag challenge founder Adam Ullock went out for a run in his Bedford neighbourhood on March 29 and didn't like all the litter and garbage he saw, so he decided to do something about it.
“I figured if I went out and collected garbage myself, I could make a little bit of a difference,” Ullock said in a telephone conversation on Tuesday. “But I wanted to figure out how I could extend the garbage pickup and maybe get our province a little cleaner while everybody's kind of quarantined, not at work, looking for things to do to get outside and exercise. So I thought it would be a good idea to start a challenge on Facebook.
“I started with my friends and family and it kind of went quite a bit further than that.”
Now, the Facebook group has more than 1,400 members with new people posting about doing the challenge roughly every 30 minutes to an hour, Ullock said.
“It's been really fun.”
The challenge asks people to fill one garbage bag with trash during a walk around their neighbourhood and post a photo of it to the Facebook group's page.
“It falls within all the rules of social distancing,” Ullock said. “You only have to do it in your neighbourhood, so you don't have to go anywhere out further than that. And you can do it by yourself or with another person. Just as long as you're following the rules.”
The challenge has been a huge success, he said. And now others have started across the country.
“I've had some people from different provinces reach out to me to start there, as well. So we have P.E.I., Ontario and British Columbia doing the challenge now, too.”
Ullock runs a catering business and is busy with that while managing the group's Facebook page. But he still goes out and picks us trash twice a week.
He figures more than 10,000 bags of garbage have been collected in Nova Scotia through the group's efforts.
He has started a spreadsheet to allow people to start to keep statistics but only about 20 per cent of participants have been filling it out so far. But one of his goals is to have that more widely adopted to keep track of statistics and keep the initiative growing.
“Even I have noticed a difference in my neighbourhood when I go for walks and runs and stuff like that. It's a little bit cleaner every day. It's really nice to see, actually.”
A lot of people are looking at it as a positive thing to do in such a negative time, he said.
“Every day is something new,” Ullock said. “Either we speak to different councillors from different towns or somebody has different questions or they want to get a group together. Every day, it's evolving, and a lot of people are really, really happy with it.”
His goal is to bring awareness and making small changes to create bigger changes.
“There's a lot of families out doing it right now, so kids are picking up litter and hopefully they'll realize this and see this and not litter, themselves, or will spark a little bit of change for the future. Or if somebody that regularly litters sees us out picking up garbage, maybe they'll think twice about doing it next time.”
