GTA environmental group nears milestone of 10 million litter pieces picked

A handful of volunteers made their way to Aimos Waites Park Friday morning to take part in a cleanup by the lakeshore.

Their efforts are contributing towards a milestone set by the team at A Greener Future: 10 million pieces of litter picked since the organization began in 2014.

“Pretty crazy to think about,” said A Greener Future Program Assistant Rachel Lynn. “First of all, that there’s 10 million pieces of litter out there, but also that all the volunteers have picked up that many.”

The GTA not-for-profit runs these events almost every day from Oshawa all the way to Hamilton, with the help of community volunteers.

At this cleanup alone, there were 3,441 pieces of litter removed from the park.

“I think the goal, really, is that we’re thinking ahead, thinking into the future and making the world a better place each and every day,” said program assistant Sadie Foster.

“And that’s what we’re doing with these cleanups.”

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People from all backgrounds come out and offer their time, including students completing volunteer hours, businesses on team outings and families.

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At Friday morning’s event, members of the visiting Cirque du Soleil team joined in on the effort.

“We try to have a good impact where we go. It’s not only on stage, it’s beyond the stage,” said Cirque du Soleil’s Mégane Fremy. “Obviously, littering and pollution is a common denominator to all these places, so we try through small actions like this to make a difference and make it right.”

Foster and Lynn go through each piece of trash manually, then tally it up and add it to the data set, helping the organization notice trends and possibly influence policy change.

The most common litter they see is plastic fragments, packaging and cigarette butts.

“So many cigarette butts. They actually can contaminate up to 1,000 litres of water — just one cigarette butt,” Foster said. “So, today at our cleanup we’ve picked up probably 500. Just think about how many litres of water that could potentially contaminate.”

Their message for potential future volunteers: you can always make a difference, even if it’s just one bucket at a time.

“People think you have to do really big things to make a change,” said Lynn. “But, you can see with what we’re doing here that every piece does matter.”