Sometimes the planet sends a small thank you note back. This time it arrived for all of us at once.
A few weeks ago I wrote a story about the 29th annual Trash Bash at TRU. It was a quiet, ordinary morning that turned into a curriculum: bending down again and again near the Science Building with Mullai, Ada, and Sofi, learning the geography of carelessness, finding socks and snack wrappers and one lonely parking ticket in the grass. I wrote that story not to win anything. I wrote it because that is what we do at DROKACADEMY. We notice. We do not look away. We share what we learn so the next person can learn a little faster, a little gentler.
And then the Sustainability Office shared the numbers, and I had to sit with them for a moment. Together, across the whole campus, the Trash Bashers collected a whopping, record-breaking 590 kilograms of litter. Five hundred and ninety. That is not a statistic. That is hundreds of small acts of bending down, hundreds of people choosing to pick up what was not theirs to leave. The campus is so much cleaner because of all of you, and I am proud beyond words to have been one small pair of hands among so many.
The “Every Litter Bit Hurts” campaign, run with such care by the TRU Sustainability Office, chose our blog for the Best Social Media Selfie award, with a $15 TRU Dining Card as the prize. But I want to be clear about something. I did not win this. We did. I happened to be the one holding the camera, but the story belonged to the whole EDSW Trash Bashers team, and the morning belonged to a community of people who showed up with garbage pickers in hand. Somehow I get to hold the card. The credit goes to all of us.
And oh, the company I get to keep on this list. Let me celebrate them, because their stories deserve to be told too.
The Junk & Disorderly team from Trades & Technology earned Most Trash Bashed per capita. Just four people, Jaclyn, Dawn, Frank, and Bryce, hauled in 116.7 kilograms. That is 29.2 kilograms each. Bragging rights, well and truly earned.
The Tidy Cats from Veterinary Technology took Best Team Spirit, and reading about them made me smile out loud. Spiffy team t-shirts, glittery cat ears, and a pawsitive attitude, 123.6 kilograms dragged in by James, Denise, Ashley, Erica, Janie, Jolie, Tara, and Rachelle. Among their finds was a headboard and footboard, now being repurposed by one member as a privacy screen for a hot tub. Turning trash into treasure is the whole lesson, isn’t it.
Alana of the Third-Floor Trash Tribunal, from the Office of the General Counsel, won Weirdest Find for a discovery I am still thinking about: hard-boiled eggs. Out of a year that also turned up a high-performance tire, a hubcap, pirate coins, and a Monsters Inc. movie, the eggs stood alone. Some mysteries are best left unsolved.
And Brandi from the Trash Pandas of Advancement won Early Bird Registration, because she signed up before the deadline and reminded the rest of us that care often begins with simply saying yes, early and without hesitation.
There is something fitting about a dining card as a prize. Eat on campus. Sit at the table. Because that is the whole point, isn’t it? We clean the campus so that we can keep living on it together. We pick up the coffee cup wedged in the ferns so the ferns can grow and the deer can go back to being deer. Sustainability is not abstract. It is lunch under the pavilion with the people who showed up, the burgers I had to miss this year, waiting for me next time.
So here is my promise, the same small promise I make to the place that holds me every recycling day: I will keep sharing.
I will keep writing the stories. I will keep teaching, gently, the way a good neighbour teaches, that a ticket in the grass is a lesson left undone, and that most of what we find belongs in a blue bin, not in a bush. I will keep telling my students in Educating for Social Change that what we leave behind, someone else has to pick up, and that what we teach today shapes what tomorrow’s campus looks like.
And I want to ask the same of you.
If you bashed trash this year, thank you. If you wore the cat ears, registered early, found the eggs, or carried one of those 590 kilograms, thank you. If you teach one person, gently, where the recycling goes and why it matters, you have done the real work of sustainability education. We live on one planet. Mother Nature should not have to hold what we have not yet learned to properly dispose of. And learning, real learning, takes patience and someone willing to show the way.
So keep promoting sustainability. Keep sharing your knowledge. Keep bashing the trash. Take the selfie, write the story, teach the neighbour. The award is kind, and I am grateful for it, but the truest prize is the one we give each other: a cleaner, more cared for place to belong.
Kudos and cyber high fives, or paws, to every one of you. I will keep sharing. Will you?
Love. Care. Share.
One planet. One campus. One community.
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