Cleanup a Success

FODE President, James MacArthur, gives pep talk to cleanup crew

Todmorden Mills received a spring cleanup on the weekend. It was sponsored by Friends of the Don East (FODE) and the Todmorden Mills Wildflower Preserve. Participants scoured the site armed with garbage bags and picked up refuse that has collected over the past year. About 25 people showed up including a group from the Don Heights Unitarian Congregation.


Picking up garbage on hillside just below Pottery Rd.

As usual the garbage consisted mostly of plastic and paper garbage with a liberal mix of bottles and cans thrown in. The back area of the Mill is a popular location for teenage partiers so there is always a good collection of beer bottles and cans. My favourite pickup item though was plastic-wrapped dog shit. How nice of dog walkers to pickup after their dog only to throw it away in a convenient natural setting. For some reason they couldn't wait until they reached a nearby garbage can.


Unitarians from Don Heights

There were a couple of unusual items found - a 5 foot diameter truck tire, a ghetto box radio, and a pig's head. OK, the pig's head was just a rubber hallowe'en mask but I had great fun pulling it out of a plastic bag as a practical joke "Hey, I found a pig's head. Wanna see?"

The cleanup has been done annually for the past 8 years. While much of the garbage collects over the previous 12 months, there is some garbage that has been there for years, sometimes decades. This is an indication that the cleanup crew can't find enough recent garbage so they are looking for the hard to find stuff. Of course it's still wishful thinking that this won't be an annual event for sometime to come. So I guess I need to say, see you next year. Here's a big thankyou to all the participants.

Postscript: TMWP volunteer Glenn G. has posted some additional photos of the cleanup. Follow the link to his photogallery.