Shopping Carts and Porcelain Plates: Cleaning Parks for SOLE's Planet Protection Month 2023
Each month at SOLE is themed around one of our company's core principles.
How many bags of dog poop can five adults and a baby collect from the bushes in a local park in a single afternoon? It’s a question we never hoped to ponder. It’s not even one we took seriously until we’d passed the 50 mark.
A couple of weeks ago SOLE’s branding team gathered to clean up a local off-leash dog park in Vancouver. We followed in the footsteps of our colleagues in Calgary who, the day before, pulled a shopping cart from a local river and collected everything from golf balls and camping chairs to construction materials discarded in a local park.
At SOLE each month is named or ‘themed’ after one of the company’s core principles. September is Planet Protection Month. This month has a special focus on getting together as teams to do something for the planet. This action could take many different shapes, but the last couple of years have seen us rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty. Nah, we wear gloves, obviously.
The Vancouver team doing their thing at a local dog park.
The Vancouver team doing their thing at a local dog park.
These planet-focused collaborative activations are important to us for two reasons. Firstly they help to ground us in one of the main focuses of the business: doing things in a responsible and sustainable way. Having the right kind of impact on the earth is central to what we do at SOLE, and it’s one of the things that gives us the most joy and satisfaction as employees.
Secondly, these mini events are a great opportunity for us to get together outside of work. This is especially important for those of us who work from home year-round. We get the chance to enjoy each other’s company in a more real and substantial way than is possible from each side of a computer connection. It’s also a great way to get outside and work together on something completely removed from our everyday routines and focuses.
Our Calgary team came prepared with waders!
Our Calgary team came prepared with waders!
Our CEO Mike is right there with the rest of us, dragging moldy, mossy backpacks out of the undergrowth. Our VP of Brand, Karla, brings her baby. Now before you panic, neither mother nor child is handling trash. Karla is responsible for data entry on the Oceanwise platform through which we’ve identified the location and organized the cleanup.
The locals in the park smile and greet us appreciatively as we walk by with our trash bags. For many of us, walking through a park picking up trash isn’t something we’d ever do in another context. Here we get the chance to feel those warm fuzzies you get from doing something good for the people and place around you. And speaking feeling warm and fuzzy, we grab a beer together at a local brewery when it’s all done.
The Vancouver team’s final tally includes, among other things, 41 beer cans, 16 cigarette butts, two backpacks, a porcelain plate and 79 dog poop bags. An afternoon well-spent, we think.