One lottery ticket, a pet carrier, a pair of shoes, and of course, lots of wrappers and plastic. These are just some of the things we found along the Elbow River in Mission during Calgary’s 44thAnnual Pathway and River Clean Up. Those were pretty tame findings compared to other teams, who found a rubber flying pig and a vintage tin filled with antique buttons.
Staff from the Central Library, along with family and friends, put on their gloves, grabbed their garbage bags and headed out to stoop and scoop up garbage along the river between the 4th Street bridge and the 25th Avenue bridge last Sunday.
After an hour of scouring the riverbank we had accumulated 13 bags of garbage and two bags of recyclables. That sounds like a lot, but it was a vast improvement over last year when we collected 25 garbage bags from the same section of river. Perhaps the new boulevard erected along the river by the Cliff Bungalow-Mission Community Association is encouraging people to stop and smell the flowers instead of throwing garbage on them!