Fun, difficult, competitive
This is how I would describe my first clean planet challenge.
Fun - it was part of our Hive Creator Days meetup at Graz. Cleaning up our planet with 20+ other people was always going to be a fun activity
Difficult - Graz is a very clean city, and a clean city means there is little rubbish. Not ideal when you're on a challenge, but good for our planet
Competitive - who would have thought a simple activity like picking up rubbish can get so competitive. I'll show you in a minute.
When I first heard that one of the activities at Graz was to pick up rubbish, my first reaction was 🤔🥴🙄. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a better and cleaner world, and I make sure I never drop litter anywhere. But I had never imagined myself going around a city picking up rubbish. Well, there's a first for everything and I've done plenty of that on Hive, this is another one to add to the list.
Everyone was split up in teams of 4 or 5, this is our team name. Off we go!!
This was a two in one challenge, to walk to the Schlossberg, a park on the top of a hill in Graz, and to clean our planet at the same time. The clock tower at Schlossberg can easily be seen from the city centre
And this is what it looks like when you get to the top of the hill.
In the way up, we passed by the Murinsel. This is a floating island connected by two bridge and has a cafe in the center. It's unfortunate that I didn't get time to even set foot on it.
In fact, I didn't even have much time to take many photos on the way. This is the only other one, when we took a rest mid way.
We walked slowly up to Schlossberg. Rubbish was the currency. Everyone digging deep, searching every corner, turning every stone in search for that valuable bit of plastic, wrapper or cigarette butt. It didn't take us long to get to Schlossberg, maybe less than an hour. I finally stood in front of the famous clock tower.
Schlossberg consists of a park area, a museum, a few restaurants, and amazing expansive views of Graz city.
Most of us chilled out when we arrived, but a few competitive ones continued with the challenge. Like our very own team member
@ninaeatshere who climbed over the wall onto the ridge.
Then she struck gold with a drain cover. What is it with smokers throwing their cigarette butts all over the place? They really should have their own butt smacked!!! It wasn't long till
@ph1102 saw her discovery and the two of them started their own little
butt ciggie bud picking competition.
Finally the winners were announced, I can't remember what criteria was used, the heaviest or the biggest bag of rubbish. We had at least three glass bottles, I'm pretty sure ours was the heaviest.
In the end we all agreed that we would be joint winners with
@tinabrezpike's team. Nothing better than a happy ending to a great challenge.
@solarwarrior provided many prizes, I nabbed the Clean Planet t-shirt.
And to prove the effect this challenge has had on me, here's me on another mission the next day after the final meetup picnic.
