A 20-year-old Victoria man spent 12 hours collecting garbage off the side of the highway near Thetis Lake.
Armed with garbage bags, a utility grabber and gloves, Aaron Dayton tackled a two-kilometre stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway on June 27, ending the day with 28 full bags of trash.
“I used to work out in Langford and would bike along that highway about three times a week,” he said in a statement. “Seeing all that trash really stuck with me. As soon as I had the idea to pick up trash for a day, I knew that was the location I needed to go to.”
Aaron Dayton, 20, collected 28 bags of trash from the side of the highway in Langford this week. The feat took roughly 12 hours and 10,000 squeezes to a utility grabber. #YYJ #Langford #Environmentalism pic.twitter.com/VqfkP0MCpx
— Nina Grossman (@NinaGrossman) July 2, 2020
While the 28-bag feat is impressive, the young do-gooder warns that long trash picking sessions come with side effects such as “hand cramps and musculoskeletal injuries.” In fact, he estimates he squeezed the utility grabber nearly 10,000 times to collect all of the garbage.
The endeavour was the kick-off for Dayton’s upcoming YouTube channel, ‘Sprouter,’ with which he plans to make a series of environmentally-oriented videos with information on how everyday people can reduce their carbon footprint, as well as answering questions with research-based evidence.
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