Our story
“I walked my son to daycare every day. Past the same garbage. And did nothing.”
- Started
- Spring 2024
- Where
- Halifax, Nova Scotia
- How often
- Every day
- Named by
- My son
I was reading Marcus Aurelius at the time, and one line would not leave me alone: “You can also commit injustice by doing nothing.” Walking past the same cup every morning was the doing nothing.
So that year I asked for a garbage picker for Father’s Day.
Most mornings
Rain or shine
The dogs come tooThe daycare walk became the daily walk, and the picker came on every one of them. Two and a half years later it runs my life a little. Thirteen hundred pounds of litter and counting, most of it coffee cups, cans, and cigarette butts from the same few blocks of Halifax.
My son was a toddler. He called the grabber the Icky Picker, because it picks up icky things, and the name stuck to everything that came after. A neighbour gave him a picker of his own. He says he is helping Mother Nature.
“When we find garbage, it’s like a treat for us!”
He got a picker of his own from a neighbour. Finding garbage is a treat because, in his words, they love helping Mother Nature. He is proud of the haul every single time.
Nobody was recruited.
People saw a kid with a picker having fun and wanted in. Another dad and his son on our street, then the grandparents. Three more families at our park. Friends in Toronto. At the park, kids run over to pick up garbage and show me. At his daycare too. Kids want to contribute, and this is a simple, accessible way to let them take care of the planet.
Now I get texts of people’s hauls. Regularly, unprompted.
Nobody was asked. They just send them. Names are hidden.
From picker to platform.
A pickup vanishes the moment it is bagged. No record of what was found, no accountability for the brand on the cup, nothing to show a sponsor or a council for the hours. So, with Luke MacDonald’s vision, we built World Litter Run: ploggers photograph what they pick up, taggers name the item, material, and brand, and companies sponsor crews so that the money goes to local charities. The photo is the unit of value, and a human verifies every tag.
Logging the litter after every walk was the tedious part. So I bought a camera, wrote its firmware, strapped it to the picker with elastics, and taught my phone to name what I pick up. That is the Icky Picker we are building.
It is a humble way to serve your community, and an answer to the doom and gloom. A simple local action with a positive ripple. I will keep picking until we have eradicated litter. Halifax first, then everywhere.