CBC Interview discussing #cleanupfred13

Here is a recording of Terry Seguin interviewing me this morning.

#Cleanupfred13 Community Cleanup in Fredericton - April 21st

Facebook event page
The second (possibly annual) #cleanupfred garbage cleanup is scheduled for April 21st. Feelsgood.ca is helping organize this event which includes Earthbound Trio playing some tunes along with free beer ( for those of age ) and food for all! This is a family friendly event so please bring your children as we will have a scavenger hunt and prizes to give away. If you would like to help out please contact me at discardedcomfort@gmail.com

We will be meeting at the Capital Bar (Patio if we get a sunny day) at 12:00 pm sharp for a quick safety talk, some directions, and a word from Mayor Woodside.

Everyone will break up and begin picking up trash from all over the city. If you are looking for some good spots, take a look at this google map with some recommended areas http://goo.gl/maps/OkhS8

Please ensure that you drop your garbage bags either at the Loyalist's Club, the Northside Green (near garbage cans along the driveway), FHS (at the Priestman entrance), or at the Capital Bar driveway. We will pick the bags up later in the day.

We also encourage volunteers to separate recyclables and take them home or to a public recycling bin.

Thank you all for your participation! If you have any questions feel free to send them via this event or to Chafic Haddad on facebook or email discardedcomfort@gmail.com

In Partnership with:

greenshopsfredericton.ca
feelsgood.ca
frype.ca
realfoodsfredericton.ca
myspace.com/earthboundtrio
frederictontrailscoalition.com

#Cleanupfred13 Photo Contest!

Calling all photographers!  Cleanupfred Photo Contest!

Please bring your cameras to take some photographs of discarded coffee cups!  Even use your phone's camera!  

The way it works:

Upload the photos to the Facebook event page or on twitter with the hashtag #cleanupfred13.

A winner will be selected a week later and will receive a free pass to Folly Fest! 

Come on Saint John !

So...Saint John seems to love their Timmys as well!  

#cleanupfred13 Event Planned April 21st in Fredericton

The second (possibly annual) #cleanupfred garbage cleanup is scheduled for April 21st.We plan on having a band along with free beer ( for those of age ) and food for all! This is a family friendly event so please bring your children as we will have a scavenger hunt and prizes to give away. If you would like to help out please contact me at discardedcomfort@gmail.com

More information on the event to follow.

My $1 Re-Usable Starbucks Cup

So I bought a $1 re-usable cup from Starbucks and have used it about 5 times in the past couple weeks. The barista told me that the cup is good for at least 30 coffees but didn't really give me much details.  I mean, does Starbucks assume we handwash our cups?  Did they take into account those who will put it in the dishwasher?  Does it even matter?

I'm going to keep track of each time I use the cup for a coffee (whether I make it or not), other (which includes tea or lemon juice) and each time I put it in the dishwasher.

I'm sure these cups are durable enough to handle 30 hot coffees!!

Starbucks' Cheap ReUsable Cups

Today I found out that this exists:

It's a reusable cup that only costs a buck!

I've always thought that it would be neat if cafes would charge the standard 2 dollars for people that had re-usable cups and an extra dollar for paper cup customers.  This would be sort of a penalty tax for not bringing a reusable cup in.  Starbucks is taking this in a different direction however.  For 1 dollar, you can hang on to this cup, wash it, and re-use it again.  When you bring it in for a refill, you'll receive a 10 cent discount.  The cup pays for itself after 10 visits!  I'm not sure how long these cups last before they break down, but they look and feel tough.   I may have to buy a cup tomorrow and test it's durability!

Starbucks aims to convert 5% of their paper cup users over to plastic reusable or travel mug customers by 2015.    It's great to see that a huge coffee corporation keeping stats on it's impact on garbage and energy consumption.  Starbucks reports that they've seen a 55 percent increase in travel mug use over the past three years.  The coffee giant is an environmentally conscious company and actively engages with this customers via social media.

I really hope that more consumers helps Starbucks meets their environmental goals over the next few years.  For more information on Starbucks' commitment to sustainability and it's impact to the environment please head to www.starbucks.com/responsibility/environment for more info.

Shopping Cart Cups

I'm going to start posting my theories on why I think some cups end up in some common places around Fredericton. 

For instance, the shopping cart coffee cup.

Often times I will find cups in shopping carts, usually abandoned in the middle of an empty parking lot.

What are these people thinking?  That the magic garbage fairy is going whisk this cup off to the garbage can 12 feet away??

I think 1 of 2 things is happening in this photograph.  

1.  A person took a cart to their car to unload some Zellers goodies.   They went to return the cart but didn't want to smoosh the cup between the carts so they took it out and rested it on top of the cart-line hoping that the garbage fairy would grab it because they left their car running, and they're freakin cold!

2. ...or... some jerk was just passing by and didn't want to bring their coffee inside a store, or into their car so they left it here and said "I'm just going to leave this right here, for the garbage fairy".

Is it crazy to think that there should be a $1.00 tax on every non-recycle coffee cup sold in Fredericton?

New Year's Resolution: #cleanupfred 2013

Sooooooooooo some people have been asking about my coffee cup project now that 1 year has passed since I first started picking up discarded coffee cups.

Every time I give the same answer: "The project is on hiatus."

Which is code for:  I failed to accomplish the mission.

Last year I vowed (on camera) to pick up discarded coffee cups every day for an entire year.  The aim was to collect as many coffee cups as I could find.  I would photograph the cup, post it to flickr and store it in my garbage bag.

The first 3 months was easy.  At first it was difficult to ignore the awkwardness of picking up a flattened coffee cup off of King Street on a busy noon hour in front of dozens of bustling Frederictonians.  I did however, have some encouragement from some loyal CBC fans who excitingly asked if I was the "Tim Hortons guy" a day after an interview of yours truly was shown on the 6:00 news.  The first few months was fun, but it got gross and time consuming.

Last Earth Day, I helped plan a community garbage pick up with Alycia Moorehouse, Suzie Lowthers, Tim Hortons, Picaroon's, and Feelsgood.ca and some awesome volunteers!  I was awarded an artists grant from Feelsgood.ca and helped organize free burgers, coffee, donuts, and even had some live music from Stephen Lewis and Pirate Soul at Wilser's Room.  Even through the pouring rain, volunteers helped pick up over 120 bags of garbage off of Fredericton's streets.  It was a fun day to say the least!

So back at my failed project.  I started to lose steam around May or June.  I was finding it increasingly difficult to always carry my garbage bag around with me.  Bringing a bag full of garbage is kind of gross to bring it to work, the mall, the bus, grocery stores, dentist offices, the hospital, etc... It's gross and a safety hazard to some.

I had to clean the bag every couple of days because sometimes I pick up some nasty half decomposed cups.  One time I picked up a cup that was stuffed full of snot rags.  Coincidentally the next day I was sick as a dog.

So those are the 2 excuses I'm going with, but runner up excuses are the following:

-  taking the time to clean the cups
-  uploading the pictures to flickr and tagging them
-  blogging about the project

So it's a new year, time for a resolution and mine is to revive this project.  I'm hoping to help put together another Earth Day event this year and will resume the project full steam.  I suppose this will sort of act as a relaunch to the project.  I'm hoping to involve schools and any other community that would like to help out.  In the meantime I will be blogging, tweeting and facebooking my friends that helped last year and will ask for some help.

Please stay tuned for 2013's version of #cleanupfred.

Been a while...

Man I suck at blogging!  I'm going to try to blog at least once a week...sorry about the lack of content everyone!

This shot was sent by Charlene Hodder

#Cleanupfred Thanks You!

Man it's been a few weeks since I last blogged!  Even though we had terrible weather, #cleanupfred was still a lot of fun!  We had roughly 70 - 80 people show up and gathered around 150 bags of garbage!  20 of those bags were coffee cups!

Thanks to everyone who came out!

#Cleanupfred

The Earth Day event is beginning to shape up.  I was recently awarded the Feelsgood.ca grant of the month so now I have the resources needed to put on a fun event on Earth Day.  I'm hoping to put together  a day of fun which includes a free BBQ, live music and possibly guest speakers.  Tim Horton's has agreed to sponsor the event by providing rubber gloves, garbage bags, tshirts, coffee and donuts.

I'm doing my best to find other Frederictonians who would like to help clean some "zones" that have been laid out on this google map.  I'm also encouraging people to join the #cleanupfred facebook page.  It would be great to start a social media campaign using the hashtag #cleanupfred.

I would love to see people shooting pictures of coffee cups and fast food garbage they find in the streets leading up to the event.  Photos can be tweeted with the hashtag #cleanupfred and #fredericton tags.  Shots of garbage can also be uploaded to the #cleanupfred facebook page.

Special thanks to Feelsgood.ca , Picaroons, and Tim Horton's for helping put this event on.

Let's get this social media campaign off the ground :)

(see what I did there?)

Earth Day Cleanup in Fredericton!

SO I've been working on organizing an Earth Day cleanup here in Fredericton April 22nd and so far I have 29 people interested.  The idea is to pickup garbage in zones that I have created on this google map.  Each zone will either be a shopping center parking lot, public park or school zone.  Teams will be made up of at least 3 people and I would encourage each team to sign up to clean 2 or 3 zones.  I'm hoping that each team will also have a photographer to document every piece of trash fast food trash.

It would be great to compare the ratio of coffee cup finds to fast food finds to "other" types of trash that we collect.

I will be adding more information about the event here on this blog as well as on the facebook event page.

Stay tuned!

Vegware Cup Coffee Test - Results

So the results are in.  Vegware makes some great organic and compostable coffee cups, however one style of cup did not pass my test.  It was only a matter of about 4 hours when I noticed the first leak.

Oddly enough, the brown cup in the video has had coffee in it for 2 weeks.  There was absolutely no sign of leakage or breakdown at all!  It's actually quite impressive to see a cup so strong that it keeps stinky coffee in it leak free for 2 weeks!



Perhaps I should test some Tim Horton's and McCafe tests just to be fair.

Any Roll Up The Rim Winners?

So has anyone won any free coffees, donuts or big screen TVs yet?





{EAV:ea0bc5124b327e56}

Vegware's Coffee Lids Are The World's First Compostable Lid!

I just spoke with a very friendly representative from Vegware who is interested in my project.  I'm hoping that I can convince at least 1 coffee shop to consider using Vegware's compostable coffee cups and lids.

Brace Yourselves, Roll Up The Rim Is Coming

Created by Karen Furlotte

So as mentioned in my previous post, I found 2 Roll Up The Rim cups yesterday, which is sad because the campaign JUST started that morning.  I'm keeping a separate category for RUTR cup finds over the next few weeks.

February Totals So Far

Wilmont Ally

It's that time of year again, Canadian Christmas.  Roll Up The Rim is back and the internets are buzzing up a storm!  Canadians LOVE Roll Up The Rim.  And why wouldn't you be excited?  Tim Horton's is giving away 40 Toyota Camry Hybrids, 100 Panasonic 3D Viera Tvs, Coleman Camp Gear, 5000 Panasonic Lumix cameras, and 47,000,000 DONUTS!!!

In fact, the first words I heard anyone speak today was about Roll Up The Rim!  I was waiting for my bus and a guy got out of his truck and yelled "It's Rim Rollin time again!".  At least, I assume he meant Roll Up The Rim.

While I was on the bus on the way to work, I saw my first RUTR cup, but I didn't make the bus stop so I could pick it up.  It was about 8:30 am ... and I'm betting the Tim Horton's opens at 6:00 am.  So within 2 and a half hours of the campaign starting, I saw a discarded RUTR cup.

Here are February's totals thus far:

Tim Horton's 66

McCafe 5

Other 8

Roll Up The Rim 2

Reids 4

Styrofoam 1

Timothy's 1

February total 87

*  36 of those cups were found in parking lots on prospect and they were mostly Tim Horton cups.

Roll Up The Rim is Back

The campaign just started today and I saw my first red RUTR cup on the sidewalk downtown Fredericton.  I couldn't grab it because I was driving by on the bus.

*sigh*

I will be on the lookout for you Timmy cups.

Vegware Coffee Cup Water Test - 1 week later

So after 1 week, water remains in each cup (except for the small one because it either evaporated or the cats drank it)



So I'm quite positive that the cup that I filled with coffee was not leaking but rather, I spilt some on the exterior of the cup.

Let's see how long coffee will live in a vegware cup before it leaks.