Action blog post #4

So far, last Monday we completed our second nature clean-up. Although, we would have liked to do more due to the different schedules we’ve had at school and our own personal different schedules. Despite this, Chantal, Dorra and I went to clean up lafarge lake/town center park last Monday. We stayed for about an hour and filled a large garbage bag about halfway. We’ve noticed since the grass areas are near the new rockypoint ice cream stand, there’s a lot more popsicle sticks not being disposed of properly. Although there’s garbage cans around that area, there’s still more garbage there. We cleaned the lafarge lake trails, a bit of the parking lot near the evergreen cultural center and a lot of the grassy area near the garden and the rocky point ice cream stand. Overall, this was a very fun nature cleanup and we enjoying knowing that even our bi-weekly cleanups do help keep our community clean. And we look forward to more!

Our greatest success was scheduling a day where we were able to complete a nature cleanup. Unfortunately we weren’t able to all attend as one of our group members was out of the country. However, Dorra, Chantal and I all attended after school and felt great doing so. Our next success was the the amount of garbage we picked up. We always find garbage of various sizes, this time it was mostly food packaging especially from the rocky point ice cream stand. It may seem like nothing, but after looking at the areas where we cleaned it looked so much cleaner. Lastly, while we were heading home one of our greatest successes was seeing a friendly squirrel which came near us and stayed there for a little while. It was very fun to see such a cute creature and it was a great reminder why we need to keep parks clean not only for us but also for the wildlife living there.

The constant problems we face are scheduling within our group. It seems like we’re never able to find a date where we can all complete a nature cleanup. Moreover, we had spring break, then less weeks of school during these last few months, and usually we agree to meet up after school. We still haven’t been able to complete a nature cleanup with everyone in the group present as other plans and responsibilities keep coming up. However, on this nature cleanup we faced a challenge we had never encountered before. Usually the challenges we face are more or less the same but this one was a special case. The area we last cleaned up at lafarge lake covered a lot of the grassfield area near the garden. Contrary to last time, throughout this area was a lot of construction happening. Since we didn’t realize this was taking place until we got there, we decided to walk through a few different areas compared to last time. Another challenge we faced was forgetting a large enough garbage bag luckily, during my off block I walked home and got one for us to use later.

Next, we’re planning to do nature cleanups on mondays after school the days Chantal and I don’t have executive member meetings for a school club. So we’d be doing a nature clean up at least every one to two weeks. We’ve also talked about planning in advance more. for example, to avoid situations such as forgetting equipment. Instead, we will communicate and make sure what we need is packed in our bags ahead of time. We will also be checking the weather ahead of time to ensure we will be prepared for the temperature and weather like the rain. For example, bringing jackets when it’s cold or will rain. We plan to continue encourgaing others to also do their own nature cleanups when they go on walks or walk their dogs because it’s a simple but impactful action. As well as posting our blog posts hoping that more people will read them and also be inspired to take part in helping around their community. We’re so proud to be doing this action and making a big difference for our community and parks! Especially considering the facts that the weather will begin to get warmer and more people will be going out to parks more often.