Day 6 - Optimist Park

Date: Aug 11, 2021

Location: Optimist Park

Garbage (lbs): 2

Recycling (lbs): 2

This cleanup marked our second park cleanup in August, which was completed with all 4 members of our project group. This was interestingly the first time in a while all members of our group were present for a cleanup; which was fortunate as Optimist Park was much larger than any other park we had been cleaning up (even rivalling Ada Johnson Park). Our initial impression of the park was one of a seemingly pristine park with lots of amenities, located right next to two schools (Northern Lights PS and St Jerome's Catholic School). Upon closer inspection, however, we noticed a significant amount of trash near the busiest locations; that is, the baseball diamond and the school garden. There was also lots of trash in the parkette near the trail, which was often visited by trail goers. These observations are important for later reasons.

Despite the high amount of trash we noticed at the high-traffic locations; that is, the baseball diamond, garden, parkette, etc., what was interesting was the park had many garbage cans near those locations. However, we noted that many people still littered and did not bother to even walk the small distance to properly dispose of their items. This pointed to a larger problem in Aurora's littering system as a whole: not enough enforcement of park cleanliness. It's not enough to simply have garbage cans scattered around parks; although convenient, those who don't litter would walk the extra distance anyways to throw away their garbage. But for those who are less educated on littering's harms, or don't care about the issue, it's necessary to inform them through signs about the harms of littering. A stronger solution would also be to implement littering by-laws, which, even if difficult to enforce, would still act as a deterrent to people wanting to litter as they would have to pay a hugely inconvenient fine. This matches our observations from our previous parks, the issue of tragedy of the commons where people simply don't consider the consequences of their littering, but only what is most convenient to them.

Given this tragedy of the commons, this appears to be a structural problem within communities where a few bad apples can ruin the experience and natural beauty of parks for most of the other law-abiding citizens. This has led us to reflect on the other environmental issues in the world which are also caused by tragedy of the commons, such as the extraction of natural resources or air pollution. Many countries that are being taken over by multinational corporations, like Brazil, are having their rainforests clear-cut for quick profit or agricultural farming, at the expense of the biodiversity and native populations. A few bad actor's monetary greed has forever altered the life of the majority of those who live with nature in harmony; essentially our parks' situation on a much larger scale. In these cases as well, environmental regulations and international pressure are possible mechanisms to counteract this tragedy of the commons.

#CASCleanup2021