You know what they say: one man’s trash is another man’s ...Halloween treasure?
Nova Scotia businesswoman Angela Riley littered her front lawn with rope and old lobster traps to show her neighbourhood the frightening amount of garbage washing up on the province’s shores.
“The first thing that went up was the spider web and it was out of rope we picked up from Hurricane Teddy,” Riley told HuffPost Canada. “And then it took off from there.”
After losing her job early on in the pandemic, Riley took the initiative to organize socially distanced clean-ups on the beach. In just two months, Riley’s family-run business, Scotian Shores, has collected nearly 2,500 pounds of shoreline debris — with the help of friends and neighbours in Eastern Passage, N.S. You can learn more about the business in the video above.
“I wanted to create awareness and start that conversation in a positive way,” says Riley.
Her advice: try to buy things that aren’t going to be thrown out after Halloween and repurpose what you can instead. Not so scary at all!