Good riddance to bad rubbish

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This article was published 09/04/2025 (518 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A microwave so old it has dials, a tabletop, and enough kitchen clutter to stock a pantry have been dumped along a stretch of Maryland Street.

The mucky boulevard between Notre Dame and Sargent avenues ranks among the city’s worst litter heaps, says Tom Ethans of Take Pride Winnipeg.

“We rate this section a 10 (out of 10),” Ethans said, referring to the organization’s scale for its annual litter index, which was released Wednesday.

Ethans figures volunteers will need several hours to clean it up.

“It’s a lot of litter for a block, block and a half,” he said, estimating they’ll need at least 50 garbage bags.

The West End neighbourhood is rated 6.8, meaning it tops the list of 12 areas Take Pride surveys annually, while Maryland is one of 24 streets listed as needing cleaning.

The results are slightly better than last year — down to 5.4 from 5.6 (with 1 being clean and 10 being terrible). Four areas were slightly worse than last year, with the North West going from 5.2 to 6.4.

A few blocks away on McGee Street, a towering garbage bin is surrounded by a mess of trash — cardboard boxes, booze bottles and food containers scattered around like debris from a storm.

Down the street, closer to John M. King School, an overflowing recycling bin spills garbage onto the ground, ripped-open trash bags are nearby, and a couple of discarded mattresses complete the wasteland.

This is only a sliver — less than two kilometres — of the 650 or so Ethans and his team survey each spring while collecting data for the litter index.

Ethans made his way to Empress Street and Ellice Avenue near Omand’s Creek, where plastic bags flapped in the brush and shopping carts were abandoned along the embankment or partially submerged in the creek.

“When you see this kind of stuff, it really makes the city look horrible,” Ethans said.

Daniel McIntyre Coun. Cindy Gilroy says her ward has long been in need of a strategy to reduce garbage.

“Our area needs way more attention… an area that needs more support,” she said. “There needs to be more funding to do the work we need to do.”

Gilroy said restoring pride in the neighbourhood starts with the basics, such as removing graffiti and replacing old, damaged or burned-out bins.

“When the community feels that their community has left them, they too… don’t have pride in their community,” she said.

She emphasized the current state of litter predates the area’s annual spring cleanup, an effort powered by local groups such as the Spence Neighbourhood Association and the West End Resource Centre.

But Gilroy added that lasting change requires community buy-in.

“It’s not just on the city,” she said. “If everybody went outside and cleaned up in front of their homes, whether renting or owning their home, we would see a major difference in our community.”

The problem isn’t confined to the West End or lower-income areas. The city’s northwest, including stretches of the Perimeter Highway and Oak Point Highway, had the second-highest litter score at 6.46. The south end — home to Kenaston and McGillivray boulevards, and Bison Drive — ranked third with a score of six.

Ethans says Winnipeg’s litter problem is due to a mixture of issues, from plain laziness to a lack of garbage cans on city streets.

“It’d be great to be like Disney World with a trash can every 50 feet, but that’s just not realistic,” he said. “Even then, they’d likely be overflowing, which makes things look even worse.”

The city’s water and waste management department said there are around 3,300 outdoor garbage cans in the city — mostly smaller bins, near bus stops and in parks.

Larger bins, such as those behind apartment complexes, for instance, are often privately operated.

“The city’s bin collection service is different based on the address,” a spokesperson said. “Some are emptied once a week, some twice a week. Also, sometimes the bins are missed for a valid reason, like something is blocking access to the bin. This could be why these bins are so full.”

City crews inspect known arson hot spots and track litter in those areas and in response to concerns reported to 311.

Ethans says a shift in mindset is needed.

“We need people to start acting like the young kids when I go to schools and do presentations,” Ethans said.

He was recently at École Dieppe in Charleswood, where a couple of students asked him how they could help.

“Other people just don’t care. They think it’s somebody else’s problem. It’s our problem and we have to take care of it.”

Last year, 20,000 volunteers from schools, community groups, and businesses signed up to help tackle the mess — and a follow-up summer survey showed a noticeable drop in litter.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca