With the City of Airdrie hoping to achieve it's goal of zero waste, the annual Canada wide Pitch-In event has taken off.

Aiming at gathering communities together for a city-wide clean up, it not only helps the environment but also helps out Parks.

Ron Chapman, City of Airdrie Councillor, said with everyone pitching in to clean the city up, it leaves less work for Parks.

"I would imagine that Parks are out there on our pathways and in our parks, picking up garbage as they go. The less work that they have to do, the more time they can spend concentrating maintaining the park, not just picking up garbage."

Mayor Peter Brown said he noticed how much garbage has collected throughout the city, especially now that the snow is gone.

"The one thing you notice as you drive around town, especially now that we don't have the snow, there is a lot of garbage around this community."

According to Mara Pratt, waste and recycling education coordinator with the City of Airdrie, this particular event took months to organize and prepare.

"I would love to see it become an annual event because it kind of brings roads, parks, waste and recycling together."

Pratt said a campaign with illegal dumping is currently running due to illegal dumping becoming more of an issue within the city.

Gathering at the Westside Recycle Depot on Sunday morning, five different hair salon groups came together to kick off the Pitch-In event.

Those salons included Hair Benders, Hair Lounge, Env, Mezzanine, and Chatters.

This year marks the 49th annual Pitch-In Week, with 625,000 volunteers organizing approximately 15,000 clean-ups nation-wide.

This year, Pitch-In Week hopes to collect 3.75 million pounds of waste throughout 6,000 locations.

In the past 49 years, Pitch-In volunteers have successfully removes 125,000 tonnes of garbage and waste from Canadian communities.