Garbage in parks, school yards, and the Thames River will soon find its way into proper waste receptacles as London embarks on its annual city-wide cleanup.
The Clean and Green program, now in its 21st year, kicked off at ECO Park on Medway Rd. on Tuesday.
The initiative asks Londoners to pick-up litter in their neighbourhoods and features the 12 Days of Cleaning, a daily awareness campaign on how to prevent littering and illegal dumping from happening.
"There really is no excuse that these materials end up in our ditches, our streams or in school yards," says Jay Stanford, Director of Environment, Fleet and Solid Waste for the city. "There are easy to use facilities in London to take this trash from our curbside recycling program to our drop off depots or a number of businesses in London that earn their living from these materials."
Stanford says the amount of garbage collected over the course of the program is staggering.
"We will collect over a five to six day period anywhere between eight and ten tonnes," says Stanford. "That's pretty amazing when you think of it because a lot of that is very light materials such as paper and plastics. It adds up really quick but it sure takes a lot of people to collect that much material."
The 12 Days of Cleaning includes the annual 20-minute London makeover, which has been renamed the 22-minute London makeover this year because it falls on Earth Day (April 22). Businesses are encouraged to let employees out for 22 minutes to collect litter outside of their workplace.
The clean-up portion of Clean and Green wraps up with the annual Community Cleanup Day on April 23. This year there will be eight locations in the city for residents to pick up cleaning supplies and drop off litter they have picked up off the ground in their neighbourhoods.
London Clean & Green committee member Ron Scarfone says there has been a noticeable reduction in the amount of litter and graffiti around the city since the initiative began.
"Unfortunately with harsh winters, a lot falls out of the recycle boxes but there still is dumping going on and filth all over the city," says Scarfone. "That gets a little frustrating at times but as the years have gone on we see less and less trash and more influence by kids, driving their parents to come out."
Londoners can register their cleanup locations, although it is not required to participate, at www.londoncleangreen.ca.
