It’s startling how much trash lines our highways.
In fact, we could hardly believe it when the town’s Environmental Stewardship Coordinator said 2.89 tonnes of garbage was picked up during the annual litter cleanup, June 5.
That’s more than 6,000 pounds of garbage that was just laying around along Highway 16 East and Pyramid, Edith and Annette lakes.
Now we understand it’s difficult to fathom what 6,000 pounds looks like, so we thought we’d help you out: it’s about 273 10 kilogram bags of flour; it’s 200 flats of water; it’s 150 four-year-olds; it’s 120 50 pound weights; it’s 3.33 Smart cars.
In conclusion, that’s a lot of garbage, and that junk was scattered throughout the park.
Who knows how it got there. It could have been thrown from car windows; it could have flown from the box of a truck; or it could have drifted away from the transfer station, to find its resting place along the highway.
But no matter how each piece landed on the ground, the fact that in one day less than 100 people were able to pick up more than 6,000 pounds of waste is concerning.
On one hand, it’s amazing and the folks from the Municipality of Jasper and Parks Canada deserve a round of applause for their impressive efforts. On the other, the fact that there was that much waste for them to pick up is staggering.
In a national park, it is our duty to keep this sacred space as clean and natural as possible, so it remains unsullied for years to come.
We depend on that—no one will visit a park that’s covered in trash, and without visitors, Parks won’t have enough funding to keep our park afloat.
So what’s the answer? How do we get people to stop throwing their trash on the ground, and rather get them to use one of the numerous garbage bins that are spread throughout the park?
It seems education is in order.
People litter because they don’t feel a sense of responsibility or ownership for the place they’re throwing their trash. So it seems we need to bestow that sense of ownership upon our visitors.
They need to be reminded that national parks are for all Canadians and it is also the responsibility of all Canadians to keep them clean.
