{"id":1242,"date":"2013-04-02T15:09:58","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T19:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=1242"},"modified":"2013-04-16T13:18:54","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T17:18:54","slug":"inside-aurora-a-space-of-waste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/inside-aurora-a-space-of-waste\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE AURORA: A Space of Waste"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to thank you all for joining us here today, as we prepare for the annual Mayor\u2019s Anti-Litter Clean-up Day on April 20th.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students who had assembled at Town Hall settled down and shifted their attention to the speaker at the front of the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, normally we\u2019d just meet outside and start working, but in this case, there\u2019s a bit of a demonstration required.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realize you needed special training to pick up trash,\u201d came a voice in the back to some chuckles.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust watch.\u201d The man at the front reached for an empty Styrofoam coffee cup on his desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, you take the piece of garbage,\u201d he said, brandishing the cup, \u201cand drop it on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confused silence greeted this demonstration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, you take your next piece of litter, and do it again, but not in the same place.\u201d He shifted over a few feet and dropped a crumpled up ball of paper. \u201cYou need to spread it around a bit to look convincing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several hands went up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact,\u201d he continued, matching a stomping motion to his words, \u201cto make it realistic, you may even want to grind it into the ground a bit, too.\u201d
\nThe comments all came at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWait a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t this exercise to clean-up Aurora?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, yes,\u201d the instructor said, leaning back against the table at the front of the room. \u201cBut this time\u2019s different. You see, every year we have an annual Mayor\u2019s Clean-up Day. Lots of people helping out, photos ops, the whole deal. And it does make a big difference in removing all of the debris that we find when the snow melts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is that with the warmer weather over the past few weeks, some people have taken it upon themselves to get started early and clean up the green spaces near their homes. They\u2019ve done such a great job, the town is immaculate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t that a good thing?\u201d asked a student.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, the Town\u2019s invested a lot of time and effort into the Mayor\u2019s Clean-up Day next week. We have sponsors lined up, residents enrolled, materials on hand, the barbeque all arranged\u2026and if the volunteers went out and found the Town already spotless, we\u2019d lose the photo ops, and no one would want to participate again next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we\u2019re arranged this special day ahead of time to re-mess things up a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d he reassured, \u201cwe won\u2019t be throwing around tons of garbage, just enough to be convincing. And everything has been carefully chosen to be large and easy to pick up, such a coffee cups, pizza boxes, and pop cans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact,\u201d he said, pointing towards several large recycling bins at the back of the room, \u201cyou can even choose what you want to dispose of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd don\u2019t worry about the bylaw folks,\u201d he whispered conspiratorially. \u201cThey won\u2019t be ticketing litterers in town today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again, there was silence, as the bewildered participants looked at each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there are no more questions, you can pick up your supplies and head out to your pre-arranged locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the student who had joked about needing training picked up a handful of juice cartons from a bin at the back, he shook his head. He normally wouldn\u2019t do such a far-fetched activity, but he couldn\u2019t pass up on the volunteer participation hours he\u2019d get credit for.<\/p>\n

In fact, he thought, that\u2019s probably why none of the other students had left after they found out what they\u2019d be doing, either.<\/p>\n

Feel free to e-mail Scott at: <\/b><\/p>\n

machellscorners@gmail.com<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Johnston \u201cI would like to thank you all for joining us here today, as we prepare for the annual Mayor\u2019s Anti-Litter Clean-up Day on April 20th.\u201d The students who had assembled at Town Hall settled down and shifted their attention to the speaker at the front of the room. \u201cNow, normally we\u2019d just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-k2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-22 12:59:05","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}