Earth Day army deploys downtown

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This article was published 30/04/2019 (2648 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What with being a crusading newspaper columnist, there’s nothing I enjoy more than spending a cold, windy, snowy morning staggering around sloppy downtown streets picking up wet garbage.

Fortunately, that’s exactly what I found myself doing Monday morning when, shortly after rolling out of bed, I joined 389 other chilly, sleep-deprived volunteers taking part in the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ’s 14th annual Earth Day Cleanup.

Roughly 20 corporate teams signed up for the big cleanup and it was just a little brisk when we gathered outside Thunderbird House on Main Street, where we were equipped with gloves, garbage bags, plastic pails and nifty long-handled litter-pickers.

The Downtown BIZ has a full-time, 20-person Enviro Team dedicated to tracking down trash, removing graffiti, power-washing sidewalks and clearing snow, but they can’t be expected to handle the job all by themselves.

“They’re out there making sure the downtown is beautiful and clean,” said Tineke Buiskool-Leeuwma, the BIZ’s director of marketing, events and communications.

“This event is to support them and to bring people together to take ownership over the downtown and ownership over Winnipeg.”

One of the goals of the annual cleanup is to raise awareness of the importance of keeping our downtown clean, and to remind everyone the business community and the public have a responsibility to lend a hand, especially after the snow melts to reveal built-up garbage.

“It brings our community together for a common goal,” Buiskool-Leeuwma said before we volunteers fanned out to attack wind-blown litter along the streets of Chinatown and the Exchange District. “We should all take the time to put our trash where it needs to go, including our cigarette butts, and be good corporate citizens.”

I wasn’t on a corporate squad, but was lucky enough to bump into a friend, Cheryl Roney, an executive with the property management firm Triovest whom I’d met at a charity dinner years before, and we formed our own two-person team.

It turns out Monday was Cheryl’s birthday, and she decided to celebrate by helping clean our downtown. While I volunteered for the morning shift, Cheryl also hit the streets for the afternoon shift at Millennium Library Park.

Helping her celebrate was her daughter, Kristin, 23, who volunteered to promote the event on social media while her mother spent her special day stuffing refuse into plastic bags.

“Somebody’s got to do it,” Cheryl told me, beaming. “It’s a great way to celebrate — giving back and doing something for the community. I can go to a spa any day.”

The two of us formed a dynamic duo employing the following two-step method: 1) Armed with a long-handled litter-picker, Cheryl would dart into alleys and parking lots and energetically scoop up soggy garbage and drop it in the bag; and 2) I held the bag open.

“If everyone did this for two hours once a year, Winnipeg would be a cleaner city,” she said, dropping yet another empty plastic drinking bottle into our bag. “After the snow melts, there’s a lot of garbage. It’s more visible. It is very ugly.”

It would be an understatement to say Cheryl attacked our war on litter with a great deal of vim and vigour — she would sometimes abandon the litter-picker and hoist up larger chunks of garbage with her gloved hands.

“I’m having a great time,” she declared, delighted to have stumbled on another pile of refuse to bag up. “To be outside doing this instead of sitting behind an office desk is kind of a nice change.”

We dragged two huge garbage bags back to Thunderbird House — crammed with everything from an abandoned brassiere and a pair of floral bikini bottoms to a sodden copy of the book Awakening the Buddha Within.

I casually slung one of the bags over my shoulder, prompting Cheryl to laughingly point out: “You look like Santa Claus.” Wherein I sniffed: “Yes, with some really lousy gifts.”

After dumping our bags, I started talking trash with a group of five cheerful women — “We’re best friends” — who had tackled the garbage-filled alleys and streets with the skill and enthusiasm of a precision drill team.

“We call ourselves the Earth Angels,” Mo Malkowich, a senior case manager with the Workers Compensation Board, told me, laughingly pointing at her companions. “We’re all angels and we’re trying to save the planet.”

These earthbound angels spotted the spring cleanup ad on the BIZ’s website and thought it would be a fun way to spend a chilly April morning and help out at the same time.

“We do lots of group things and we love to help out,” Mo explained as the other women nodded in agreement.

“We’re always looking for ways to help in Winnipeg. We started as hockey moms. We all had sons the same age. We met when they were just six years old. They’re 28 now and we’ve been friends all that time.”

The oddest item these angels retrieved was an abandoned power drill in a box.

Otherwise, it was mostly plastic bottles, empty chip bags and paper coffee cups.

Last year, 334 volunteers collected 1,772 pounds of trash, but I suspect we will easily top that record this year.

I’m already looking forward to next year’s cleanup, and I hope Cheryl and the Earth Angels come back, too — because I’d hate to be left holding the bag on my own.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca