The Yellow Point Roadside Trash Challenge

Wouldn’t it be great to make Yellow Point a trash-free zone? So that’s our goal.

In Sweden they call it PLOGGING – Picking up Litter while Jogging. Or walking.

It’s really quite easy: we simply carry a bag while we are jogging or walking, and when it’s full we take it home and recycle as much as we can. On trashy roadsides we might need several trips to get it all covered, but once we’ve done the initial pick-up,there will hopefully be less in future.

Here’s our progress so far: the roadsides marked in red have been adopted by 19 people (adults and children) who have volunteered to keep it clear of trash. If you would like join us and adopt a stretch of roadside, send an email to yellowpoint2020@gmail.com  Let’s make this happen! We need “Keep Our Roads Clean” volunteers on these stretches:

• The southern areas of Doole Road
• Cedar Road around North Oyster Elementary School – pretty bad, lots of trash
• Cedar Road from the Chuck Waggon to Hill Road
• Cedar Road from Hill Road to Bennie
• Cedar Road from Bennie to Cedar Community Hall
• Cedar Road from Cedar Community Hall to the corner at Yellow Point Road
• Yellow Point Road from the north-end Cedar Road corner to Braun
• Yellow Point Road from Sabey to DeCourcy
• Yellow Point Road from Decourcy to Juriet

 

How to Start Your Own Roadside Trash Challenge

If you want to do the same elsewhere, here’s how you can go about it:

1. Approach a local society, association, club or school either that you already belong to, or that you think might be interested. If they agree, and you are not already a member, sign up to become one.
2. Choose a street or roadside you are willing to adopt yourself.
3. Persuade 3 or 4 more people to adopt a street or stretch of roadside, so that you have a good beginning before you go public.
4. Find a large printed map of your neighbourhood (ask at the library?) and colour in the roads people have adopted, plus any other features to make it look attractive. Your club or society can use this at meetings, to persuade other people to join in.
5. To create a website map, choose the area you want to cover, locate it on Google maps, and do a screen capture. Working on an Apple, you can use GRAB This will give you a tiff. Most websites want a jpeg, so use a converter to turn your tiff into a jpeg.
6. Using Powerpoint, create a slide with your map and add red lines to the roads people have adopted. Add any graphics or signage that you want. Use GRAB again to capture the map, and the converter to turn it into a jpeg.
7. Ask your society, school or club’s website person to create a webpage, similar to the way we have done it here, and insert your map with the red roads to get people inspired and signing up to adopt a street.
8. As more people volunteer to adopt a street or a stretch of road, add more red lines to your map. Do a new screen capture, and add the new map to your website.
9. Ask your club, society or school to let you write a story on your Roadside Trash Challenge, and circulate it through their newsletter.
10. Using your map as the defining image, post a story on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media. And that’s it!

 

Lexi-Maartman-Jones with trash gathered from Yellow Point Road

Guy Dauncey with trash gathered from Yellow Point Road over 4 weekends (including accumulated trash from maybe several years).