It’s no happy accident that Earth Month lines up with the early weeks of spring. If a junk drawer or office space is on your spring-cleaning to-do list this year and you come across unwanted writing instruments, Clean Up Peterborough wants to take them off your hands for the betterment of the planet.
Now coming up on their one-year anniversary, the volunteer group is hosting a writing instrument drive throughout the month of April to divert as much waste away from the landfill as possible. Products accepted for the collection include pens, mechanical pencils, highlighters, permanent markers, and the caps for such products.
“We all know that people have things that might be put aside in their drawers and not throw away,” says Clean Up Peterborough founder Steve Paul. “I actually have found that there are quite a few people that have pens that don’t work and, for whatever reason, they stick around.”
Throughout the month, Clean Up Peterborough is encouraging businesses, organizations, schools, and families to set up a box to collect the products at any time. At the end of the month, the organization will then count the collected items and donate them to the free TerraCycle recycling program, which is held at Staples office stores across the country.
TerraCycle will clean the products, separate them by material, and recycle them into raw formats that manufacturers can then use to make new products.
“This program has been around for quite a while, and not many people know about it,” says Steve, noting that he often hears from people that they just throw out their instruments when they are no longer usable. “I thought, ‘What better time to take this opportunity during spring cleaning to use this platform to talk about some good things that we can do?'”
Clean Up Peterborough previously hosted the drive during Circular Economy Month last October and collected over 500 writing instruments. The drive inspired some schools, offices, and businesses in Peterborough to keep their collections running year-round.
“I just hope that over time, it’ll get more momentum, and it will go from a Circular Economy Month or an Earth Month event into annual collections,” says Steve.
“We can start looking at outreach and education through the kids [in schools], because what better way for them to be stewards of our futures than to talk about it with their families and say, ‘We did this at our school, and this is really important.'”
Steve adds that one aim of Clean Up Peterborough is always to provide people with accessible solutions and opportunities that help them reduce waste going into landfills and are 100 per cent free to participate in.
“It doesn’t take much time, it doesn’t take any money,” he says. “In fact, in the spirit of circularity, you really just need a bin or a box something that could be created at the school or at the business or organization.”
“It doesn’t take up a lot of space and it’s a huge opportunity for people to reach out to all their professional and family connections and say, ‘What do you have at home?’ Let’s do some spring cleaning and see what we can do.”
Steve encourages people to get creative with the drive by decorating their boxes, and he also has TerraCycle posters that Clean Up Peterborough can give out to those who want to advertise their independent collections.
“Not every business would like to have a cardboard box sitting at the front of their retail space, but there are ways to beautify it,” he says, suggesting businesses could have fun with it and challenge each other in a contest.
“A little bit of friendly competition actually helps, especially for this because there are no dollars involved and people could be as creative as they want.”
While organizations are encouraged to start their drives on their own at any time, they can contact Steve at cleanuppeterborough@gmail.com to arrange a pick-up of the donated items at the end of the month.
“I think it has the potential to make a pretty big impact, maybe not just in Earth Month,” he says. “Hopefully we’ll be able to make it permanent by having organizations continue to collect going forward.”
During April and beyond, Clean Up Peterborough is collecting other items for reuse and repurposing them in various ways through partnerships with other community organizations and start-ups. Such products being collected include milk bags, egg cartons, fishing line, ink cartridges, batteries, aluminum pop tabs, and more.
“These become conversation starters to get the word out that you don’t just have to throw everything out,” says Steve. “There are a handful of us in the Peterborough community that are finding ways to become a voice for sustainability and circularity and help people find the places they can take the more obscure items.”
Throughout Earth Month, Clean Up Peterborough is also partnering with various groups to host clean-ups around the city, with dates set for April 12 (Armour Hill/Ashburnham Memorial Park), April 19 (downtown Peterborough), April 22 (Beavermead Park and Beach), and April 28 (Technology Drive parking lot).
To keep up to date on events and drives organized by Clean Up Peterborough, join the Clean Up Peterborough Facebook group.
