Simple Suggestion #230... Organize a neighbourhood clean-up

I love April, with its warmer sun, longer days, and budding trees. What I don't love is that when the snow is gone, garbage is everywhere. All the stuff that got blown around in our winter storms and lost in snowbanks shows up in our parks and ravines, and often deposits itself under bushes or against curbs, fences, power poles, and between my house and my neighbour's.

Which is why I'm so glad for Capital City Cleanup, a program in my city that encourages residents, schools, businesses and organizations to get involved in making our neighbourhoods cleaner and safer. The Adopt a Block program invites Edmontonians to make a regular habit of picking up litter with family and friends as we walk our neighbourhoods, or favourite park paths or trails, with a volunteer website to register our chosen areas.

And the 28th annual River Valley Clean Up is coming soon, the first Sunday of May. I'm thinking it might be a day to skip church and get involved, hands on, in caring for creation with my kids.

But even if there are no clean up programs where my moodling readers live, it's really easy to start your own. When our kids were smaller, my neighbour and I chose a spring afternoon each year and cleaned the little area park across the street with our kids. It's good to teach our young ones the importance of protecting our environment from pollution and waste, and picking up litter (with appropriate safety precautions in place -- gloves, adult supervision, and a lesson about getting the adults to dispose of sharp or dangerous things) is one simple way to do it.

So this Simple Suggestion is a really a simple challenge in disguise. Why not organize your own neighbourhood clean-up? As we head into spring, if we all clean up more than our own property, we're doing the earth and each other a favour. And we're simply showing respect for the beautiful world in which we live.