Fredericton’s #Cleanupfred event enters its fourth year.
A few years ago Fredericton resident Chafic Haddad made national news when he set out on a one-man-mission to bring attention to the enormous amount of litter he was seeing throughout the city. What started out as an individual pursuit has now grown into an annual city-wide event.
“This will be #Cleanupfred’s fourth cleanup,” said Haddad. “The idea came about while I was photographing discarded coffee cups in the streets and started picking them up. Originally I was hording all the coffee cups in a storage locker and planned on putting them on display one day, however there were so many damn cups I couldn’t sustain the project. The idea was to photograph, geo-tag and pick up every single cup that crossed my path each day. It became a burden, having to carry garbage with me everywhere I went. Cleaning them when I got home also became quite the chore.”
Feeling overwhelmed in is efforts, Haddad organized a public event and called on the community to lend a hand.
“I figured that there were probably a few environmentally focused people in this city that would love to get together for a community cleanup,” he said, “so I partnered up with Suzi Lowthers to organize our first Cleanupfred in 2012 and worked with the city to organize what is now an annual event.”
Cleanupfred is a family friendly event and has been attracting nearly 100 Frederictonians annually. Each year participants are thanked with food and drink and live entertainment following the cleanup. This year’s event takes place on April 26, 2015 with participants meeting at the York Street Train Station at 12:30pm.
“Having a great turnout is definitely our main objective,” said Haddad. “We have had rain two out of the three past events which can impact who shows up, however we’ve had some awesome troopers, namely some military families that showed up last year. Though the weather can be quite the challenge at times, we do our best to encourage our friends and peers to come out. So far, over 200 people have signed up for the event via our Facebook page so we’re anticipating a fun afternoon.”
Cleanupfred 2015 | York Street Train Station | April 26, 2015 | 12:30pm
