Neighbourhood Clean-Up Day

Last Sunday, my neighborhood held its twice-yearly local clean-up event. We received notice of this about a month ago via our local community group (my husband signed up for it when we bought our house) and were expected out at 8:30am to voluntarily embark on a clean up of the roadsides and open spaces, weeding and clearing away overgrowth. 

The whole community most certainly was not out for the occasion, but a lot were - quite a few senior citizens, in fact, showed up well before the 8:30 start time. It was a muggy day, the threat of rain low and the temperature not yet at a summer high. Still, the conditions weren’t entirely pleasant.

I have mixed feelings about the community clean-ups - and I got to stay home with my one year old daughter rather than head out myself! On the positive side, I like the idea of the local community taking care of itself. I think it’s nice to see people taking pride in and responsibility for the public spaces, and that it fosters both respect and a sense of community. 

It thus feels a bit mean-spirited to question the value of it and to ask why this is our responsibility, yet I find myself doing so. We do pay tax, after all, and this seems to fall into the category of things our local government should be managing. Furthermore, the idea that these spaces are even public ones sometimes feels a bit questionable. The land in the photo I’ve included that the locals are working on actually belongs to a railway company, and railway companies turn quite a profit hereabouts. It’s not land we can actually use ourselves and it is well within the company’s means to actually pay someone to do this rather than rely on the goodwill of a bunch of elderly ladies. 

Still, there’s a bit of a Scrooge-ish feeling to even thinking that. 

An aside shared by my husband during the last clean-up day helped me better put my finger on what my problem was. He had returned early (I was once again on baby-watching duties) and explained to me that while he and some of the locals were diligently clearing overgrowth at their community centre (i.e. definitely a communal space and justifiably a communal responsibility), one of the other neighbours had shown up. This neighbor farms a lot of vegetables and consequently owns a whole lot of gardening tools and equipment specifically for doing this sort of work. He duly got to work and finished up the cleaning of the community centre’s land far more quickly and easily than the others could. 

And that’s the thing that gets me about the whole thing. There are professionals out there to do this work, or at least amateurs who actually have the skills and equipment. It doesn’t feel fair or necessary to push people who have and are neither of those things into doing the work. In the end, it feels like work for work’s sake and if the goal is actually community-building, there are plenty of other ways that it can be done. 

Oh well. At least I didn’t have to do it myself? Also, it’s a definite plus that they do this in June; in our old neighbourhood, they did it after rainy season, which was a whole new level of awful!

What are your thoughts on the community clean-ups? Do you like them? Do you participate yourself?