Hats For Sale

Sometimes I think people leave these cups just to mess with me

This was left on the walking trail. /facepalm

Coffee Cup Parade Garbage

Disgusting.  All I could think was "disgusting" while I walked up Brookside Drive Saturday night after the Christmas parade.  50 - 70 coffee cups lined up along the curb in clusters of 3, 4, and 5.  People just abandoned their temporary hand warmers once the parade was over.  What were they thinking?  "Oh don't worry the garbage fairy will pick up your trash, just leave it on the road."

Sunday afternoon I shot this video along Main and Fulton counting 129 coffee cups.  Did I pick them up?  No I did not...not my job.

Monday morning, I sent a tweet to our Mayor Brad Woodside with the above video attached expressing my disgust of this mess.  Within an hour I received a tweet back from him that read:

Agree. I will bring it up.RT @pam_wheaton: @Chaf @bradwoodside @frederictonnews Good for you Chafic! It's an excellent, and very simple idea

It's great to live in a city where your mayor actually directly responds to tweets every day.  And it's actually him, I've seen him tweet in the past.  I was excited that he had seen the video (assuming) and said that he would bring it up.

Well yesterday morning, a friend of mine notified me that Capital FM had reported that councillor Bruce Grandy brought the issue up in a council-in-committee session Monday night.  He was also very disappointed by the mess left behind and proposed that garbage cans should be made available for next year's parade!

Here is a clip of Grandy discussing the issue on Capital FM:

http://www.capitalfm.ca/Channels/News/Story.aspx?ID=1578403

Now I'm not sure if I can take all the credit here.  The Article in the Gleaner mentions that Coun. Grandy was approached by some people at a local northside eatery, but either way I'm glad that a few complaints is actually getting something done in this city.  

The next step is to try to get a meeting with Mr Grandy and possibly Mr Woodside to discuss my photography project and see if there is anything the city could do to encourage changing our nasty North American coffee culture.  Our fast food, drive thru nation is making our city ugly and it's up to Frederictonians to make a difference here.

If you're on the twitters, please take a minute to thank Mayor Woodside and Bruce Grandy for taking the lead on this issue.

Who Are These People?

I don't get it.

I don't understand how people either forget they put their cup down on a shelf in Walmart ...

Or leave the cup there thinking, fuck it...it's empty...I don't need this anymore.

And just leave it on the shelf .

Seriously though ... Who takes their cup and says "fuck you fence, fuck you" ...

and JAMS THEIR GARBAGE into the fence?

What if the person that left the cup in there was really sick ?  I wonder if that cup could contaminate those sweet and salty bars...

#hypochondriac

King and Westmorland

Fall

Really?

Cup Hunted Today

I shot a few cups today.  Here is a map of what I found.

Flickr Map of today's finds:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chaf/map/

DSC_0165

DSC_0165, a photo by chaf.haddad on Flickr.

Regent St Needs More Trash Cans

Collecting Trash Is Harder Than I Thought

I underestimated how difficult it would be to collect trash every single day of my life.  I figured, meh... just put the dirty, stinky, moldy coffee cups into a bag.

No big deal.

Wrong.

I tried collecting cups every single day for about a week.  I now realize that I can't always carry garbage with me everywhere I go...kinda nasty.

Now I have to tweak my methods to accommodate for my lifestyle.  I highly doubt that I will ever want to pick cups up on the way to a party, or even on the way to work so I'm dedicating 30 minutes every day to pick up cups.  This way I don't have to pick up cups if I'm running late for work or to meet a friend.

I may not use these 30 minute blocks everyday.  Maybe I won't feel like bringing my camera out in the rain one day...so I would just bank that 30 minutes for the next day or the day after that.

Now that I have a Nexus S I will start posting more shots to the blog as I find them.

I will start picking the cups up again June 1st.

Kings Place

Graffiti says "I smoke to get high because the world is so low"

Standings

Even at the schools, a Tim Horton's cup lurks about.

Reflections

Win Up to $10,000 for Reducing Coffee Cup Waste

Betacup from the betacup on Vimeo.

To take part in this project, head to http://www.thebetacup.com/

First Week of Spring

So I finally started picking up the cups.  I decided to start collecting the cups on the first day of spring because this is when maximum cups from the winter thaw will be kicking around.  The day after this thought occurred to me I saw a report in the news about melting snowbanks filled with layers of garbage.

Collection logs

March 21 - 22 - first load
Irving Cups 2
Timmy Cups 9
McD 1

March 23 - second load - walk from Canadian Tire to work
Irving 1
Timmy 7
McD 1
Robin's 1
BK 1

Updated Flickr Set
Updated Flickr Map

Cleaning Cups

If you had to pick up used coffee cups off the ground to store them for a year, what would you disinfect them with?

Timmy stuck in a tree

What a ridiculous weekend.  It was topped off by one of the nicest photo adventures EVAR.

Timmy stuck in a tree.

Jogger litter?

I honestly did not put that cup in there!

There was a trash bin 10 meters away.

Flickr Group here.

Map is here.

Saturday Walk to the Market

These are some shots I took with my iPhone walking to and from the market on Feb 19th

Updated photo map 

How Many Discarded Coffee Cups Do You See Each Day?

Seriously, I bet you see 5 - 10 discarded coffee cups per day minimum.  Now that you've read the previous sentence, try to be conscious of this trash the next time you go for a walk.

I'm not telling you to pick it up.

Just notice them.