City group cleaning up discarded face masks

By Dale Woodard on March 30, 2021.

Alyssa and Rylee Kusalik were part of this weekend's Community Mask Clean Up. Herald photo by Dale Woodard

Lethbridge residents are still masking up in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But a group is doing their part to make sure those masks are also properly disposed of as well.
Alyssa Kusalik, coordinator for Community Mask Clean Up, an Alberta-wide initiative, and a few other volunteers have spent the last month making their mark on mask pickups around the city as well as general litter cleanup.
On Sunday afternoon Kusalik and her cleaning crew gathered in front of City Hall to tally up the haul of another day’s cleanup.
In addition to the usual litter, Community Mask Clean Up gathered 1,965 masks for disposal.
While acknowledging that sometimes weather can create a mask mishap, Kusalik stressed the importance of disposing of the masks properly like any other garbage.
“I get that sometimes the wind takes it out of your hand, but at least make an effort to go and get it,” she said, adding picking up a stray mask isn’t a risk. “Wear gloves, don’t touch your face and you’re fine.”
Kusalik said she and her family started with a garbage cleanup last year when COVID first hit.
“This year when it got nice we started cleaning up garbage again, but we noticed an abundance of masks out there as well,” she said. “We just decided we were going to do something about that and really focus on it.”
Kusalik said the mask pickup started about a month ago before becoming a province-wide endeavour.
“We started picking things up and taking pictures of what we collected. But it became Facebook official two weeks ago.”
At that time, Kusalik and her group picked up just over 1,200 masks.
On a windy Sunday afternoon, a larger group showed up for the clean up.
“So it was great,” said Kusalik. “We hit up the north side behind Walmart. There were some people out in Legacy Ridge and on the south side behind Canadian Tire. We did some residential areas and in back alleys, those kinds of things.”
Kusalik said she and her group will be heading out again soon for another round of cleanup.
“I know there’s another event planned in a couple of weeks, but any day we’re out and about we always carry gloves and bags with us and we pick it up when we walk by,” she said.
The Community Mask Clean Up’s Facebook address is https://m.facebook.com/events/752915841873880

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