It’s amazing what a drought will do to a city. Forget the water restrictions, the endlessly sunny days, and our crispy dry forests. If you took even a sideways glance around Vancouver this summer, you would have noticed the garbage.
Garbage overflowing from the bins on the corner, in the gutters, strewn along sidewalks and alleyways, and across our beaches; litter as miniscule as cigarette butts in doorways to as major as mattresses and couches left to rot on roadsides. Illegal dumping is becoming rampant, in dead end streets and cul-de-sacs, wooded areas, and even onto private city lots. Sadly, garbage begets garbage.
Yes, this is Vancouver I’m writing about, the city that once had the reputation amongst travellers and tourists as crystal clean and glistening. It’s amazing what a summer without rain will expose. Have we relied on our soakings to regularly wash us of our trash, to clean our streets? Has the anti-litter movement of the mid-20th century not clicked with generations of the 21st? Why are there no garbage bins at most bus stops in East Vancouver?
Our city enjoys a huge yearly influx of tourists flooding in over the summer months, a massive boost for our economy. But with Expo nearly 30 years in the rear view mirror and now five years after the Olympics, we should certainly have the infrastructure in place to handle the crowds and their tossables. A pair of tourists I spoke to in August who had travelled here from New York thought we were in the middle of a summer garbage strike. When New Yorkers think your city is a mess, you know you have a problem.
For all of its touted “Greenest City” initiatives, it’s so disappointing that Vancouver’s sidewalk garbage cans collect only that, garbage, lagging far behind other cities in BC and across Canada that allow recycling and composting of waste on any street corner. The sidewalk garbage cans and their outward holders for refundable drink containers were once of good intention, but are now laughingly ineffective.
When it comes to taking out the trash, it looks like the chore is coming down to you and me. How about this: let’s pretend the entire city is your yard, your own private property. Think about that. Do you dump garbage out of your kitchen window onto your lawn? Do you toss out your used appliances into your front yard? Is your backyard filled with your last 20 years of computer monitors? Unless you live on Mitchell Island, the answer is probably no. You pride yourself on keeping your private property neat and tidy and free of refuse. You probably actively recycle and compost, too.
If we can apply the oft-maligned “NIMBY” thinking (“not in my backyard”) to our entire city, maybe together we reverse Vancouver’s disturbing littering trend and get Lotus Land back to its former glistening self. Let’s treat Vancouver like our own private property. Bend over, pick up a piece of trash like it was tossed onto your lawn, and throw it away or recycle it properly. The summer of garbage is over. Let’s clean up our mess.
