K'jipuktuk (Halifax) -- The great Clean Across Nova Scotia initiative is taking place this Friday and Saturday, with cleanups scheduled clear across the province. Neil Bailey, on staff at Clean Nova Scotia, has been preparing for this weekend for the last year. With over 14,000 registered participants, the event looks to be geared towards huge success.

I caught up with Neil on the eve of the big weekend.

Can you give our readers a small rundown of the Clean Across Nova Scotia event?

It's a two day, province-wide initiative that engages communities to organize clean-ups and it's a program of Clean Nova Scotia.

We provide people with bags and gloves. They chose the location, we map them out on our website and geo-tag all of the cleanups. They're integrated with social media so that people can share them, join each others’ cleanups and collaborate on stewardship to just get out there and participate in a voluntary, collective action and through that make a noticeable difference in the community.

How long has this been going on for?

This is the second year of Clean Across Nova Scotia. It was inspired by the world cleanup that we're an official member of, which last year was the inaugural year of. We were eight thousand participants in Nova Scotia, out of seven million globally.

How is this year's event different than last year?

We've got a smaller budget. Last year we had radio ads and other advertising. This year we had to do more with less, so we made a point of going out to more communities, on the ground, putting up posters in communities, talking to people in everything from post offices to Lions Clubs to coffee shops to pretty much anyone that would talk to us. And we made a point of trying to hit the grassroots even stronger than last year, and we think that's what made a difference this time around. This year there are about fourteen thousand participants registered.

What makes you most proud of this initiative?

I would say the fact that people thought it was worth participating in, and thought it was worth caring about.

The other thing would be the diversity of the groups. The fact that we've got old people, young people, service clubs, East Preston, North Preston, Eskasoni, Wildcat First Nation, Membertou, Meat Cove, Tidnish; just the diversity of communities is unreal. I don't know anything else that I've ever been part of where I could look at a list of the people participating and have absolutely no idea what they had in common. We've got students from universities as well, just everything.

We've got teams of hundreds and then there's a woman with a bad back in Sackville who's cleaning a whole stretch of road by herself.

What do you think could use some work regarding the campaign?

There's a million little things I wish I had done better. More support would definitely be great, although that could take different forms.

I think that a little bit more community ownership would be good, so that once people get used to this it's something that they prepare for. With more municipal support it could be something that was progressively more community-based. And just something more predictable, so that the longer we do it the more people learn how to work together.

Also there's the opportunity to start combining initiatives. It's great that people are banding together over a litter pick-up; it would be even better if litter pick-ups and other types of beautification were all seen to be part of the same thing.

Have you learned anything about Nova Scotia's relationship with garbage by doing this?

Yes, a lot. Although it's tough to say what is a uniquely Nova Scotian perspective on that. A lot of the issues I see related to consumption, waste and litter – they're pervasive across the country. Every place that I've lived I've seen the same issues and I think that's why there's a global movement, because they are completely ubiquitous issues. It almost doesn't matter what country you're in, you're facing some version of the same problem.

You learn the idiosyncrasies of certain issues. For example, we have a program at Clean Nova Scotia called 'Ship to Shore' and the coordinator there works with harbours and fishermen dealing specifically with marine waste and debris and litter. So definitely through her program there are specificities of litter.

With Clean Across Nova Scotia it's such a broad catchment and so many demographics are represented that you just see mainly the shocking amount of waste. It's more the fact that I think I have a greater awareness now than I did before, than the average person might, after hearing so many people's stories, than really knowing specifically how Nova Scotia is different.

What's the most disgusting thing you've picked up during these campaigns?

It depends on how you define disgusting. I've seen some illegal dumps that are just complete wastelands - graveyards for years or decades of people's things that they don't care about anymore.

Maybe the most troubling to a lot of people is the household hazardous waste. Things like needles specifically. There's something very tangible about seeing needles, anything to do with sex and drugs. When you find that outside, you see the debris left over from people's vices. I think that's probably the most powerful one. That actually relates to fast food, to alcohol, to drugs, all of it.

I think that one is probably the most interesting to me. I can understand if people drop a fridge in the bush because they live somewhere rural and they don't know what their option is. It's a little more troubling when you see the lack of care with litter related to this self-medicating, vice-driven kind of culture.

What are the most common items that you find?

That would be coffee cups, fast food, cigarette butts, primarily. Again with that, it's vices and it's convenience. The more convenient it is, typically the less value it has over the long term, so the more likely somebody is to not really care what they do with it afterwards.

Do you think that programs like this can have a lasting effect on people's consumption patterns, or do you think it just stops with getting people to put trash where it should go?

I think that the goal of Clean Across is to get beyond a typical litter cleanup, because Clean Nova Scotia has been promoting and facilitating litter cleanups for twenty years or so, and we haven't seen the problem go away. Depending on which reports you read, the problem has gotten worse. So it's a band-aid solution at best.

We're hoping that we're not just preaching to the converted when we do something this big. If it's a lot more inclusive, if it gets people out who are excited to work in that community, then that will drive a new level of caring when they realize they're not doing it alone. Then it gets beyond the simple civic duty, to a slightly deeper conversation about what it means to care together.

That's the hope for us, and we do get a lot of positive feedback on what it feels like to be doing things together. So we're just hoping that that conversation continues during and after the cleanup and that if enough people are together they'll come up with that conversation on their own, that we won't even necessarily have to educate them. If we get them together they'll educate themselves.

Aside from picking up garbage for a weekend, what other steps do you take to reduce your own waste?

I do as much of my shopping as possible locally. I'm fortunate that I have convenient access to that.

I'm trying to grow more food. It's a challenge when I'm transient and not in a place for a long time, because I'm renting property. I'm trying really hard this summer to get into backyard composting and complete those cycles, because I think that when you can close the loop yourself, when you can take your waste and turn it into fuel and turn it into input for something else, that's the greatest step. Composting is what I'm most excited about.

I participate in recycling, but I don't really think that's a solution. That's just a thing that we do.

I think one of the most enjoyable ways to reduce waste for me is just not buying new things. Just getting things repaired. Getting shoes repaired, for example, and perpetuating a skill-based economy that has at its core the many different skills of repair. So getting jeans fixed. Getting people with skills to help you not waste, and through doing that helping them build their talents and keep them in work.

I think this is probably one of the most enjoyable ways to reduce waste, and is linked to local food in a way as well.

For people who haven't hooked up with a cleanup crew yet, is there still time to participate?

Absolutely. We're keeping the cleanup map open at www.cleanacrossns.ca. People can go there, take a look at the map, peruse all the teams that are geo-tagged there and if they want to join a team, all the teams that are open to having people join them will have rallying start time and place listed on their cleanup point. So people can click 'Join this team' and that will automatically let the organizer know that somebody has joined the team and they will expect them to show up.

We really do recommend for late notices that people stuff a couple of garbage bags in their pockets before they go in case the team that they're going to gets inundated and runs out.