Earth Day Clean Up in Oakville a Big Success Despite Inclement Weather!

The 32nd annual Earth Day Clean Up of Oakville Nature Sites
on Saturday, April 22, 2023 was organized by the:
Oakville Community Centre for Peace, Ecology and Human Rights (OCCPEHR),
P.O. Box 52007, Oakville, ON L6J 7N5
(905) 849-5501, info@oakvillepeacecentre.org, oakvillepeacecentre.org

Media Release: Monday, April 24, 2023

1,000+ Volunteers Pitch-in at Sixty-one Nature Sites:
Earth Day Clean Up in Oakville a Big Success Despite Inclement Weather!

Mother Nature tried but could not stop the Earth Day Clean Up in Oakville from removing a significant amount of waste from our beautiful parks, ravines, woodlots, lakefront and trails!

The 32nd annual Earth Day Clean Up of Oakville Nature Sites was a big success on Saturday, April 22 despite stormy weather and strong rains in the morning.

The rain was strongest exactly in that window of time between 6 am and 10 am when all site coordinators and volunteers were no doubt wondering if the event was going ahead or being postponed or what!

Sixty-one of the record seventy-two nature sites scheduled for the Clean Up on Earth Day were cleaned up with site coordinators reporting that more than 1,000 volunteers pitched-in on Saturday morning and afternoon.

Postponed Clean Up’s now rescheduled to Saturday, April 29th:

Seven of the eleven sites which cancelled on April 22nd have rescheduled their events to Saturday, April 29 from 9am to 11am including at Old Abbey Lane Park, Valleywood Court, Perkins Passage, Glen Oak Creek Trail North, Stratus Parkette, George Savage Park and at Palermo Park.

In addition, the already scheduled Clean Up at Lions Valley Park also takes place on April 29 but at 10 am. 

The 2023 Earth Day Clean Up produced many notable highlights:

The theme for this year’s community-wide event is that we are “for a clean, green, litter-free Oakville” and in the aftermath of the 2023 Earth Day Clean Up, Oakville is cleaner, greener and more litter-free!

This year’s Clean Up was sponsored by Oakville’s Parks and Open Space Department, Halton Region Waste Management, Film.ca Cinemas which provided free popcorn coupons to all volunteers, Panago Pizza which baked fifty pies for volunteers at fifteen various sites, local businesses, resident associations, faith groups and community organizations.

The site coordinators worked hard to ensure a successful Clean Up by greeting the volunteers, handing out bags and gloves and directing them as to where to pitch-in. There were fourteen new site coordinators in 2023 and there was a 20% increase in the number of nature sites being cleaned up from 60 in 2022 to this year’s 72 nature sites.

A little more than 8 metric tonnes of garbage and metal was trucked away by Miller Waste Systems on Saturday. The total weight of all items was 18,400 pounds.

The greatest attendance was at the Glenashton Park site which had almost seventy members of the Oakville Chinese Senior 99 Association led by Jinglie Dou. Apparently the inclement weather will not stop everyone from pitching-in for Earth Day!

More than 250 new volunteers registered in advance for the event. Students from many schools pitched-in and received volunteer hours needed to graduate high school. 575 students at W.H. Morden PS are pitching-in this school week. Volunteers from Oakville Titans Football staffed a site at Arbourview Park in the morning and joined the afternoon Clean Up at Kerr Street North. There was a wide variety of interesting items picked up and removed. 

We also learned we need to build a really big team of volunteers to tackle the mess of trash around the trails both north and south of Postridge Drive, east of Trafalgar Road. We look forward to building a team to pitch-in here in May.

The annual Earth Day Clean Up is now organized on a Ward by Ward basis:

In Ward One, seven sites were scheduled to be cleaned up including Bronte Bluffs Park, Bronte Creek Provincial Park, Bronte Harbour, Bronte Road and the QEW Carpool, Burloak Drive and QEW, Lakeshore Woods and Valleyridge Park.

For Ward Two, there were 13 sites confirmed for the Clean Up including Aldercrest Park, Burnet Street Park, Coronation Park, Forster Park and Hogs Back Park, Glen Oak Creek Trail South,  Hopedale Park, Indian Ridge Trail, Kerr Street North, Kinoak Arena and Brook Valley Park, Old Abbey Lane Park, Valleywood Court, Woodhaven Park, and the YMCA.

Ward Three’s eight sites included Busby Park, Clearview Park and area, Dunvegan Park, Gairloch Gardens, Lakeside Park, Maple Grove Park, Oakville Curling Rink, and Perkins Passage (which includes Post Park, Maple Valley Park and the Cornwall Sports Park).

Ward Four hosted a record seventeen Clean Up sites including Arbourview Trail Park, Bloomfield Park, Castlebrook Park, Fourth LIne at Upper Middle Road, Glen Abbey Trail, Glen Oak Creek Trail North, Heritage Way Park, Langtry Park, Millstone Park, Nottinghill Park, Ravine at Third Line and Upper Middle Road, Sixteen Hollow Park, Sandpiper Road at Pheasant Lane, Stratus Parkette, Summit Ridge Drive Trails, West Oak Trails Park and Woodgate Woods.

Ward Five had ten sites including Harman Gate Park, Martindale Park, Memorial Park, Memorial Park Playground, Munns Creek Park and Margot Street Park, Neyagawa Park, Oxford Park, Pelee Woods Park and the Nipigon Trail, River Glen Park and Sheridan College trails.

There were eight sites in Ward Six including Algrove Park, Bayshire Woods Park, Glenashton Drive Bridge and ravines, Glenashton Park and Iroquois Ridge Community Centre, Iroquois Shoreline Woods, Litchfield Park, The Brownstones and Valleybrook Park.

And in Ward Seven in north Oakville there were nine sites, up from just four in 2022, including Buttonbush Woods Park, Fowley Park, George Savage Park, Gladeside Pond, Glenorchy Conservation Area, Isaac Park, Lions Valley Park, Palermo Park, and William Rose Park.

Tens of thousands of Oakville residents and students have participated in the annual environmental event over the past three decades. High school students earned volunteer hours by pitching in, too.

The five goals of the campaign are to promote awareness and respect for nature and Oakville’s many waterways, beautify local neighbourhoods, build community through environmental activism, protect wildlife and increase awareness of the need to protect biodiversity in Oakville.

The oakvillepeacecentre.org website features the list of sponsors. It will also feature a gallery of photographs taken by site coordinators this spring.

This event has been organized since 1992 by the Oakville Community Centre for Peace, Ecology and Human Rights, an incorporated, not-for-profit social movement organization.

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