- by Anne Finlay-Stewart, Editor

What I learned in the two blocks from Canadian Tire to the hospital driveway:

Boulevards are great. People are still wearing (and losing) masks. Trucks are loud, even when you are deaf. Cups and lids from Tim Hortons, Starbucks, Wendy's just break into a hundred smaller pieces of plastic that are harder to see and pick up but have the same environmental impact. A lot of people stand and smoke around the edges of the “smoke free” hospital property, and there is no butt disposal.

The afternoon pick at the Memorial Forest produced far fewer butts, mostly those beside parking spots, but a full bag of litter – shoes, gloves, ... the working end of an electric toothbrush? – we even found the bag!

Walkers and kids and photographers had come to enjoy a warm day on the Bruce Trail side loop there. Those who regularly spend time on trails and in the woods understand that they may have empty wrappers and beverage containers along the way, and come prepared to put them in their backpack carry them home. The rest of us are most likely to be triggered by the sight of a garbage can – even an empty oil drum with a liner – and pitch our garbage in.

We can complain about our neighbours, and live with the consequences, environmental and aesthetic, of scattered garbage. Or we can do our best to make it easy for them, and perhaps cut that problem down by – 25%? Even 50%?

No such garbage can was there at the Forest or the trailhead. After we had our own bag full, we set it by a fence. The most pro-active among us made a call to the Township of Georgian Bluffs to tell them it was there for disposal. Georgian Bluffs, like Owen Sound, contract out their garbage collection, so the best they could say was that they would pass along the message.

Our “social experimenter” was willing to come back that night to see if it had been removed (and avoid animals undoing our hour's work), but coincidentally a Georgian Bluffs staffer in a pick up truck came by and obligingly said he'd be happy to take the bag away.

I save the returnable beer and alcohol containers for the kids down the street who take them back for skate sharpening money. (The Beer Store takes them in any condition). I'm still struggling to understand why the most conservative province in Canada has had a decades' long deposit program on all beverage containers – cans, bottles, plastic – and Ontario does not. Far fewer of these end up on the ground in Alberta, and not for long.

We're happy to report that the OSDSS pick up last evening produced (relatively) little in the way of butts or garbage. There is a wind-proof garbage can on the corner of the school property, and (relatively) little litter on the “smokers' corner”. It was clear though, that vaping has become the trend, with lots of vape pods and their tiny plastic lids.

Most of the garbage was off school property of course, on the south side of the road by the entrance to the West Rocks, and a lot of it was again wind blown – paper and cardboard from recycling boxes and trucks.

The best part of last evening was meeting a new "picker" and Hub reader to share conversation (who remembers the Legate building with a Christmas tree full of icicles?), ideas, and a little good work. 

After the pick up, I took the three buckets of trash and drove them a few kilometres to the nearest public garbage can. Actually, I went to three different public garbage cans to avoid overflowing the cans and making them available to the wind to send it all back into the street.

More to learn, more to tell. Off into the sun again!