Supercycles

We spent about two hours on a stretch of trail along the Eramosa River that we had never cleaned before. The area is beautiful: just off the trail the ground drops into a ravine with deep limestone cliffs that could pass for a stretch of the Bruce Trail, and getting to the bottom means scooting down a steep stairway.

It’s also remote, and the ravine ledge has become a place to get rid of things, at a time when we’re in a garbage supercycle, producing more waste than ever. A lot of it seems to end up in this ravine before reaching the shoreline and eventually the river.

In our relatively short time on the trails we found and removed car tires, illegally dumped landscaping plastic, a pink shell chair on a steel swivel base, a fridge compressor, plastic sheeting, and a thick foam block that was probably once the cushion of a large armchair. There was a stroller too, which I filled with smaller debris and dragged up the ravine to the drop-off site.

At the river’s edge we filled bags with decaying fabric. Some of it had made it past the shore, and we pulled a blanket out of the shallows, heavy with silt.

The last things we took out were not one but two Supercycle bikes, one of them the same model as my first bike, which I rode 400 km around southern Ontario. Mine covered a lot of ground. This one covered the distance from the ledge to the riverbank, and our kid carried it back up. Neither Supercycle was rideable, so neither of them is getting us out of the garbage supercycle we’re in.

Here’s a breakdown of the material we removed:

• Two industrial bags of debris: 15 kg
• Two car tires: 17 kg (8 kg and 9 kg)
• Stroller, loaded with debris: 8 kg
• Supercycle Nitrous, steel full-suspension (one wheel): 11 kg (recycled)
• Supercycle 1500, steel, missing its wheels: 10 kg (recycled)
• Sleeping bag full of debris: 8 kg
• Fridge compressor: 7 kg (recycled)
• Pink shell chair on a steel swivel base: 5 kg
• Garden edging: 5 kg
• Upholstery Foam: 3 kg
• 20 Cans, 15 bottles recycled