Climate Activist Spends 589 Days Cleaning Up L.A.'s Eaton Canyon

ALTADENA, CA — For 20-year-old Edgar McGregor, an Eaton Canyon free of trash was a dream that took almost two years to become reality.

Armed with only a couple of buckets and a pair of gloves, the climate activist traversed the popular Los Angeles park every day after work, picking up every piece of litter he would come across — from an old beer can to lost iPhones. McGregor said in a Twitter post that it didn’t matter if it was 117 degrees outside or the hills were on fire, he was out at the park for at least an hour each day to pick up trash.

On March 5, after 589 straight days of picking up trash, McGregor proclaimed the park was “free of municipal waste.” McGregor said on Twitter that he learned a lot about himself, about the local ecology and about the world while cleaning up the park.

However, his job is not done yet. McGregor said he'll continue to visit Eaton Canyon a few days a week to help maintain the area and that he's also set his sights on a new park to clean up.

"I expect the trash situation to be bad, but we'll see," McGregor said in a tweet of the unnamed park. "I love these cleanups, and I absolutely implore [people] to try this. Give it a shot."

Although the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation, which oversees Eaton Canyon, didn’t comment on McGregor’s cleanup efforts, he did receive kudos from fellow climate activist Greta Thunberg, who tweeted “well done and congratulations.”

McGregor told NPR that he was motivated to clean up the park after hearing Los Angeles would host the 2028 summer Olympics. He felt that the litter strewn across the Angeles National Forest, which the park is a part of, would be a "global embarrassment."

He kept track of his progress, noting the spots that remained litter-free and the ones where he had to make repeat visits, he told NPR.

“Some places were very dirty, but if I returned to them months later, they were still clean,” McGregor told the radio network. “Other places would get dirty every single week, and I'd need to clean them up dozens of times per year. Throughout all of this, I learned where every single canyon, tree and bush was in my park.”

In addition to the buckets of trash he has hauled out from the park, McGregor would also come across numerous recyclables and would donate the money he made from them to charity.

After nearly 600 days in Eaton Canyon, McGregor tweeted that he's come across more than $400 worth of recyclables.

“All of this money has gone to planting native trees in my park, supporting political candidates who promise to act on the climate crisis, or supporting charities around the world,” he said.