Skip to content

Volunteers needed for Earth Day Spring Litter Clean-up

News Release ******************* In celebration of Earth Day, the North Bay Police Service’s Environment Committee, in partnership with the North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority and Nipissing University, invite members of the public to join

News Release

*******************

In celebration of Earth Day, the North Bay Police Service’s Environment Committee, in partnership with the North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority and Nipissing University, invite members of the public to join them for their annual spring litter clean-up.

 

Event:                        Earth Day Spring Litter Clean-up

Location:                    Thomson Park and Chippewa Creek

Date:                          Wednesday April 22nd

Time:                         from 10 a.m. to 12 noon

Where to sign up?     Just show up! Meet outside the front entrance of Memorial Gardens.

Equipment:                Work gloves and bags will be provided.

Volunteer hours:        High School students will earn two volunteer hours.

 

“Earth Day promotes environmental respect, action and behaviour change that lessens our impact on the earth,” said Deputy Chief Shawn Devine, North Bay Police Service. “The day is significant for us, as police, because it gives us an opportunity to highlight the fact that the act of keeping our neighbourhoods clean helps reduce crime. We encourage members of the public to join us in our spring litter clean-up.”

 

About the NBPS Environment Committee

The North Bay Police Service’s Environment Committee was established in May 2010. Members of the committee include representatives from the North Bay Police Service, the North Bay Police Services Board, the Ontario Provincial Police Almaguin Highlands Detachment, Nipissing University, the CTS Canadian Career College North Bay and the North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority. The committee organizes annual spring and autumn clean-ups in North Bay and Callander. Over the years, the committee also introduced environment-conscious initiatives at NBPS headquarters and at courts such as improved recycling, the use of 100% post-consumer recycled paper, motion sensor lighting and encouraging employees to switch to reusable lunch/beverage containers.

 

Researchers put broken windows theory to the test

If a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, chances are the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is the premise that sparked a 1982 American criminology thesis known as the broken windows theory, which suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal behaviour trigger more disorder and petty crime. In other words, litter, graffiti, damaged property and such things as unreturned shopping carts cause people to not care about their environment and may elicit more littering, vandalism, trespassing and even theft. In 2008, researchers from the Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands put the theory to the test in six field experiments. They found that, “when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.” (Reference: The Spreading of Disorder, 2008, by Kees Keizer, Siegwart Lindenberg and Linda Steg.)

 

About Earth Day (Twitter hashtag: #EarthDay2015.)

Celebrated every year on April 22, Earth Day is the largest environmental event in the world. More than six million Canadians—including nearly every school-aged child—participate in an Earth Day activity in their communities.

– 30 –