MANITOULIN—It’s that time of year to get garbage off the sides of roads and ditches and areas across Manitoulin Island. Manitoulin Streams Improvement Association (MSIA) is hosting its second annual Manitoulin Island garbage cleanup competition from April 3-23, with prizes to be won in fun family and individual competitions.
“The whole idea is to just essentially to get people picking up garbage in the spring and to make everything look good,” said Liam Campbell of MSIA. “So, there is no garbage on the side of roads, ditches and other areas around Manitoulin. We just want everything to look good and clean.”
The second annual competition includes trophy categories for participating community members, local schools and businesses/organizations as well as several other clean up events.
Mr. Campbell explained, “there is the school award for the Island school that picks up the most garbage. Little Current Public School (LCPS) won this category last year,” he said, noting that to participate schools should send in a photo with the number of bags students collected.”
The community award is open to any community that sends in a photo of all the bags of garbage a particular community has gathered. Assiginack Township won this category last year. There is also “a business award open for Island businesses,” said Mr. Campbell. “Again, to be eligible to win send a photo to Manitoulin Stream’s Facebook page with the total number of bags your business group collected. State your business and the number of individuals who participated. The current champ is the Little Current United Church.”
There is an overall draw for the top photo of a family group collecting garbage. Don’t forget to include your family team name. Only one submission per family team. There are three prizes to win with the winning team name to be drawn randomly.
Another competition is the garb-AGE-gap event. “Grab your grandparents and take the babies for a collection stroll. The biggest difference in age between collection participants wins this one,” said Mr. Campbell. “Participants have to have at least two people in the photo to be eligible. Those taking part can send us a photo of the participants collecting garbage, to Manitoulin Streams Facebook page stating the age difference between them.” Delmer Fields and his granddaughter Ava Fields won this competition last year.
The Joyce kids of Kagawong won last year’s Garbage Cleanup Hero award, having been out collecting garbage for eight days. Participants are asked to send in a photo to Manitoulin Streams every day after you have finished collecting with all of the garbage you were able to remove. The most days of collection throughout the event wins.
“We have a new category this year, the Tallest Coffee Cup Stack (that replaces the weirdest garbage collected),” said Mr. Campbell. “Send us a message with a picture of the garbage collectors next to their stack of cups. I personally don’t like coffee cups all over the place.”
“The garbage cleanup contest started April 3 and will continue until Sunday, April 23, the Earth Day weekend,” said Mr. Campbell.
Last year, “in total thanks to everyone’s support and efforts, we had just shy of 300 bags of garbage collected over the competition. Our goal is to beat that total this year,” added Mr. Campbell.
