Another successful park clean-up this past weekend. We had a great turnout and perfect weather.

After having completed a few of these as a group, we have come to some pretty interesting observations.

Firstly, one of the biggest culprits of littering is cigarette butts. It seems like such a small thing but they take hours to clean up and we could easily fill a grocery bag with what we found this time. Did you know that cigarette butts take anywhere from 18 months to 10 years to biodegrade? The cellulose is largely plastic and when they get thrown on the ground they essentially allow for microplastics to be released into our most precious areas, like parks. Another sad fact about this is that small animals will take these small plastic filters and sometimes even eat them which can irreparably damage their bodies.

The second most common culprit is dog poo bags, and let me tell you, cleaning these up on a hot August day was just awful. Did you know these bags can take anywhere from 10 - 1000 years to decompose? Even the "biodegradable bags" ! Now, we know you cant leave dog poop in the middle of the park but there are ways to make it greener. Try a paper bag if you are going to a park with easily accessible garbage cans, or allow your dog to poop in your yard so when you do a big clean up you can minimize the number of plastic bags you need to use.

We find all kinds of things when we do park clean-up and some of them are legitimate accidents or things that made it to the garbage cans and then blew out but it is important that we all try to do our best and model these behaviours for future generations.