Jogging along the canal is supposed to be a pleasant – even fabulous – experience. But it can easily turn into something less pleasant – even disgusting – when those hundred-dollar running shoes encounter that tiny pink piece of bubblegum on the pavement.
It is probably even more unpleasant for a parent to have his two-year-old accidentally discover a condom packet while playing in the park.
And, of course, it is not only unpleasant but also dangerous to run over a broken beer bottle while cycling.
Ottawa is considered to be a generally clean city but the problem of litter is still common. Glass, pet poop, plastic bottles, newspapers, banana peels, and all sorts of other garbage make the streets their permanent home.
Some of Ottawa’s residents have started to get fed up with this litter nonsense. The recent proposal by the Somerset Street Chinatown BIA suggested banning free newspaper stands because papers pretty much went from lying inside the stands to lying on the pavement. The question is why? Garbage bins are easily available, so paper disposal should definitely not be an issue.
The BIA proposal may be interesting but, unfortunately, it doesn’t solve the problem of litter generally.
For example, once smoking was banned indoors, many cigarette lovers found themselves smoking on the streets. And if there is no place to extinguish your cigarette, where does it go? You guessed it – on the ground.
Many smokers insist that cigarette butts are small and insignificant, right? Nothing could be more misguided.
According to the City of Ottawa, cigarette butts can take decades to biodegrade, end up in sewer systems, seep into the water supply, pose threat to birds and fish who mistaken them for food, and even start a fire if thrown from a vehicle. Scary but true.
In fact, newspapers take only six weeks to decompose, whereas cigarette butts take 15 years, aluminium cans, 200 to 500 years and plastic bottles up to a million years.
Some local initiatives have been very hands-on and city officials should certainly be applauded for taking the littering issue very seriously. The Spring Cleaning the Capital campaign has been going on since 1994 and is the largest initiative of its kind in the country. It was so successful that the Fall Cleaning the Capital campaign was added two years ago and has made the cleanup team grow to almost 60,000 volunteers.
But such seasonal initiatives are not enough. Ottawa’s residents cannot expect others to clean up the mess they make. Besides, it would be impossible to clean up all the litter in the city. That would take months and months.
The key to litter management is rather simple – don’t make a mess and stop leaving the garbage around. It’s stupid, nasty-looking and dangerous. Garbage bins were made for a reason after all.
We don’t leave items that should be trashed lying around to decompose in our homes, so why should we do it on our streets? Sometimes it’s hard to argue with logic.