A Calgary non-profit dedicated to bringing people together to tidy up the city is filling bags with trash for its third annual Earth Day cleanup on Saturday.
Keep the Earth Fresh provided garbage pickers, gloves, and bags for every volunteer in Prince’s Island Park who was keen on collecting as much litter as possible.
They spread apart and went on looking on the side of roads, sidewalks, around the trees, beside bushes, and even the river bed.
“It’s very important for us to step up and take action to protect our planet,” said Angelina Hajji, University of Calgary graduate student in biological sciences and founder of Keep the Earth Fresh.
“All of our individual impacts they can sum together and they’re going to drive huge changes.”
After the winter, garbage is more visible, and anything that’s been dropped or blown out of the bins shows up as soon as the snow starts to melt.
Hajji says litter is a huge issue facing the planet.
“It’s impacting animals. It’s impacting ecosystems. It’s causing detrimental effects all across the globe, and no matter where you are you can stop it at its source because our ecosystems are so interconnected,” she explained.
“Anything that lands in the river here in Calgary, it can go into the ocean all the way into the Atlantic.”
Hajji says they also have clean-ups happening in parts of Canada, the U.S., and in Kenya.
Meanwhile, volunteers in Calgary showed up to contribute to the cause.
“Let’s take care of the earth so animals can live longer and the trees don’t die,” said Mia, a youth volunteer.
It’s their third annual event and as years go by, the community’s interest in supporting the environment keeps growing substantially.
“When I started watching this a year ago, it was just one guy and now I bet you they’ve got 50 or 60 people out here today cleaning up … Prince’s Island, so that’s amazing,” said John McInnes, founder of Earthware Reusables.
In a social media story on Instagram, Hajji says over 150 people showed up to tidy up the earth.
A couple of hours later, they weighed everything that was collected, with the weight reaching a total of 383 pounds of garbage.
Earth Day happens on Monday, April 22.