Please join this Ireland Facebook Group and participate on the beautiful Emerald Isle and beyond.

Many thanks to Sinead for getting this started!

From the fb page:

‘One Piece of Litter a Day – Ireland’ is an anti-litter campaign that aims to reverse the growing litter epidemic in our beautiful country. The philosophy is simple but powerful: If one person picked up an empty can, bottle or cigarette butt each day for a year, there would be 365 less pieces of rubbish blighting our land. Now imagine what would happen if 1,000, 10,000 or even 100,000 people in Ireland did the same. Collectively, we could make a real impact on our litter problem.

To be a success, this campaign needs YOU. Will you make the small but significant change in your daily life and commit to picking up one piece of litter a day?

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Volunteer to clean up the park, from 9:00am-2:00pm on April 17, 2010. Registration and information is on their website.

Please join in if you are in Rhode Island, or do a cleanup where you are.

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This is a great opportunity to set aside some time to help others doing  something you’ve always wanted to do… and to be in good company with millions of others who have joined efforts in the spirit of service.

If you haven’t yet decided what you want to do, or don’t have lots of free time, I encourage you to participate in LitterProject, by cleaning up litter in a favorite– or simply hurting– community spot. Bring a bag or two, a pair of gloves, and maybe even a friend, and pick up trash and dispose of it in a thoughtful way. This is a simple way to make a difference and lets you participate in something great.

Don’t let the day go by…

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I’ve been thinking a great deal about the concept outlined in the 7 keys: “be prepared to do the activity yourself and enjoy it” and wanted to elaborate a little on why this is so important.

As  you may have experienced in life, many people can be reluctant to join you in doing something new, unless they can understand exactly what will be involved and how will it benefit themselves. The easiest way to communicate this is to simply participate in cleaning up litter yourself and revel in the feeling of  1) making an immediate difference and,  2) getting good practice at being the kind of person who makes a difference every day.

It’s funny, but it is very difficult to express how wonderful a particular feeling is– or how important a particular activity is– in words alone. At the end of the day, people tend to want a more visceral cue as to what to expect.  Your happy, shining, satisfied face can indicate this and make people curious– and perhaps, even to join in.

At the end of the day, it is much more attractive (meaning will attract more participants) if you enjoy what you are doing, than if you are upset at the litterers and highlighting those feelings of anger, disappointment and disillusion.

You are in control of your attitude, and my guess is, if you find something like LitterProject appealing, you are the kind of person who enjoys making the world a better place.  So… keep up the good work and don’t be shy about why you enjoy making a difference!  Some may scratch their heads at your activity, but even more will join you…..

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Methane landfill biodigesters like the ones that Carbonfund.org supports in New Bedford, Massachusetts can produce enough electricity to power 850 households and remove 162,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year – the equivalent of planting 49,000 acres of trees.

So in addition to picking up litter, we’re encouraging you this Earth Day to consider putting our trash to work for the environment. The designer for this LitterProject website, EMWeb, offsets 100% of carbon emissions through CarbonFund, because they do good work.

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1) be willing to do the activity alone, and enjoy it

2) make the time, place and duration explicitly clear to everyone you tell about it

3) INVITE people. Don’t coerce, try to sell it to them, or overly control their participation. When invited, most people will bring something to the clean up effort that really makes really work.

4) keep it simple. Cleaning up trash is easy. All you need are garbage bags, places to put the trash, and gloves (rakes and shovels can’t hurt either!) Tell potential participants that these are the raw materials, but bring enough yourself to cover half-a-dozen people who come without .

5) have fun doing it. After all, you and everyone else will be actively making the world a better place… really. MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE! (this is what inspires me, and probably you, and probably most people who do things like this).

6) tell lots of people, including the press. Just call them up and tell them what, when, where you are doing what you are doing. Even if you wind up alone out there, you will still peak interest, and people may want to join you next time. Please feel free to use “www.LitterProject.com” as a resource/organizing principal. And feel free to forward chunks of the press release to any news organizations you contact (having something written that can be “cut and pasted” can increase likelihood of publication)

finally–and probably most important–

7) remind people and yourself that what you are doing matters by telling incidents and specifics about how it matters to you. Just the simple truth will inspire others. You can talk about what you have done to date, and the people you met along the way. The happy callouses… You can even say how you were online and found this idea, and decided to be a Promotor of the LitterProject, or talk about your own cause.

Once people experience their own daily ability to make a difference, they will probably keep it up on their own—and maybe do even do a project in their neck of the woods…

Oh yes, and if it is easy enough for you, bring some food treats for other participants as a surprise. Maybe cookies or little chocolates or something– cheap and easy is my motto on this. You can always go for coffee afterward if that works better too…

I hope this information is enough for you to move forward, because frankly, this idea needs people like you to make it work.

Best wishes in your LitterProject, and thank you for all you do!

The shortest answer is doing. – English Proverb

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Helpful hints, announcements of clean ups, stories, ideas, etc. are most welcome, and we encourage you to share them freely on this blog. Just register and login to leave a reply.

Please do not use this blog for profanity or for commercial purposes unless your product is available at a discount to LitterProject participants and directly supports environmental clean up projects.

Thanks for coming and have a great day…

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