HALIFAX—Social-media users might have noticed an influx of stunning before-and-after pictures in recent days: outdoor areas once covered in litter, now clean and trash-free thanks to some media-savvy volunteers.

The #trashtag challenge has recently been sweeping platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. The premise is simple: take a photo of a beach, trail or other place covered in litter, then take another photo after cleaning it up.

While he said the challenge is a good initiative, Ecology Action Centre (EAC) policy director Mark Butler said the solution to litter isn’t just viral campaigns and cleanups.

“Getting plastic out of the environment is important … but at the same time, we have been running antilitter campaigns and cleanup campaigns for a very long time, and the plastic and litter still keeps coming,” he said in an interview Monday.

“We need to do more than go behind the people that are littering and clean it up. We need to turn off the plastic tap.”

There is value in the cleanup challenge, said Butler. It can raise awareness for litter and other environmental issues, and make people more aware of the products they use and the waste they produce.

But he said there needs to be some “fundamental changes” in the way plastics are produced and recycled.

“There’s the waste hierarchy, which is to refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle. If we don’t do that stuff, then all we’ll be doing is cleaning up the litter with no end in sight,” Butler said.

On Sept. 15 — World Cleanup Day — the Ecology Action Centre and Greenpeace Canada conducted a beach cleanup in the Dartmouth area of Norris Cove. There, they found a “mountain” of plastic bags, tampon applicators, and coffee cups, along with a thick layer of congealed oil on the rocky shore from an oil spill in nearby Tufts Cove.

The event was part of a larger Greenpeace Canada brand audit to determine which companies are making the products found littered on Canada’s shorelines and green spaces. They found that Nestlé, Tim Hortons, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s were the five companies whose branded products contributed the most to plastic pollution in Canadian cities.

Butler said the proliferation of single-use plastics is a huge environmental issue.

“We always knew it would interfere with wildlife, and it would break down into smaller pieces, but we now know the cost of that, and that plastic will be in the system for hundreds of years, potentially,” said Butler.

“And it’s going to end up in our food, it’s going to end up in our water, it’s ending up in our sea salt. Basically anything we test these days, there’s plastic in it.”

Butler said he didn’t want to discourage people from cleaning up, but he hopes the #trashtag campaign will also raise awareness for the fundamental changes he believes needs to happen.

According to the hashtag tracking site Trendsmap.com, people are tweeting the most about #trashtag in Spain (30 per cent) followed by the U.S. (21 per cent.)

On Monday, Canadians only made up around 4 per cent of those tweeting about it.

But there are other great initiatives right at home in Halifax, according to a local runner who uses his exercise regimen as a way to make the world a little cleaner.

While the idea of plogging — cleaning up litter while out for a jog or run — has gained popularity in recent years, Luke MacDonald was years ahead of the trend.

Eight years ago, MacDonald was out for a run and said he was shocked by the “devastatingly horrible” amount of litter he saw along his route. The next day, on his birthday, he went on a run with some friends, and they picked up 19 bags of litter.

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“We ended up having a blast,” said MacDonald, a long-distance runner and a partner at the Halifax-based Aerobics First

His movement — #WorldLitterRun — took off after that, and the practice has since been adopted by communities across the world. On Wednesday, MacDonald returned from a stay in Qatar, where he spoke to schools about the movement he launched.

While viral trends and hashtags tend to not last for long, MacDonald has high hopes for the #trashtag challenge. He said that harnessing the power of the internet to inspire people to make a change in their communities can make a big difference.

“It’s giving the world a hug,” he said.

“Just take a moment to do a little bit here and there, and then when there’s so many people doing it, it really makes a significant impact.”

He noted that there are other ways that technology can make litter cleanup a little easier and more effective.

For instance, he pointed to an app called Litterati, which maps and identifies the litter its users pick up. This kind of data can help the company behind the app figure out problem areas and work with others to find solutions.

While the #trashtag challenge hasn’t gathered much steam in Halifax yet, a local organization plans to hold a cleanup next month.

Jennifer Lambe, executive director of the Hal-Con Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Comic Convention, said a planning team of about a dozen people are working to nail down a date and place for the cleanup.

While Hal-Con is typically held in the fall, the association behind it holds events year-round.

“We thought this is a very quick and easy way for a lot of the community, both our planners and volunteers, and our public, can just jump in, do something quick, and produce a visible result that makes things better,” said Lambe.

“It’s a great way for us to make an improvement in the city and do something good.”

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