Trying to change attitudes about trashed Winnipeg

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/09/2024 (360 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I was out walking my dogs during my lunch hour, about 14 years ago, when I happened upon two teenage boys.

There was a high school nearby. Perhaps they’d walked up to Corydon Avenue.

They discarded their lunch trash on the street as they walked. I picked up the trash and asked if they’d dropped something. They ignored me, refused to acknowledge the situation at first.

Then they became increasingly creeped out as my dogs and I continued our afternoon stroll behind them. Here I was, a middle-aged woman with her dogs, following them and asking them to pick up their trash. Eventually, I made it clear that I would follow them right back to their school, find a teacher or principal and let them know what happened if they didn’t clean up after themselves.

They grudgingly took back their trash near the high school. I walked home. I then called the school and asked them to remind students to be better neighbours, because free-range high school students can make a mess.

Around the same time, my front yard had a hedge near a bus stop. I was stunned by how much rubbish got “stowed” in that hedge. When the snow melted, it revealed a huge amount of trash left behind. This wasn’t the downtown core. It wasn’t due to poverty, homelessness or drug use. It was just slovenly behaviour.

Over time, I requested that the city install a garbage bin near the bus stop. The response?

There wasn’t enough room, according to the rules, to do this. Meanwhile, we cut down the hedge, built a fence and still picked up a ton of garbage. We were within easy walking distance of several dumpsters located behind businesses on Stafford, Corydon, Grosvenor and elsewhere, which were all emptied in the middle of the night and woke us up.

There were plenty of places to throw trash if one made an extra effort.

However, no one wanted to make the effort. The city didn’t want to install more convenient trash bins. Winnipeg’s bus riders and pedestrians didn’t want to use bins to discard their trash. They preferred to live this way, surrounded by garbage.

I thought of all this history when I read recent comments on X about how messy Portage Avenue looks and then saw further news coverage about Winnipeg’s increased post-pandemic trash problem.

When we first moved to the prairies, we thought that the stiff winds meant it was harder to contain trash. It is definitely possible to have trash scatter with a stiff wind. It’s also possible to have one’s trash scattered by a hungry person who is going through the garbage bins or by wildlife.

However, the vast majority of trash that ends up on our streets, in our yards and throughout our city can’t be blamed on the wind. Also, other prairie cities seem to have cleaner streets, so it’s not the wind’s fault. It’s ours.

What can be done? There are some easy solutions here. The first one is to encourage all schools to conduct “clean up” walks with their students on a regular basis as part of their outdoor education. Some schools already do this, but if kids are taught to care for their environment and keep it tidy, hopefully, they won’t grow up to litter.

What about adults? Installing more public garbage cans and emptying them regularly could be helpful. If the cost is prohibitive, one might ask for nearby businesses to sponsor these bins. Businesses would be delighted to find less trash on the ground to clean up each day.

Residents could contact the city and request bins in places where they regularly encounter litter. If the rules were more flexible about trash can placement, we might reduce street litter.

Encourage neighbourhood associations to do clean up activities and provide support, like sharps bins and other supplies. This sort of thing is already happening, but it could be more widespread. Contact Take Pride Winnipeg to get support if you’d like to do this in your own neighbourhood.

A social media campaign from the city or province that encourages people to tidy up might be helpful, too. Winnipeggers seem to have gotten used to the idea that it’s acceptable to live with litter everywhere. This isn’t healthy. It’s unsafe, unsightly and we deserve better.

Finally, the recent Free Press news coverage indicates that widespread homelessness, drug addiction, and mental health issues are drivers of the increased filth downtown. These huge issues must be addressed in a more pressing way, even though they are costly and difficult. People matter. As Winnipeggers, we’re doing a terrible job of taking care of our people and we need to do better at creating institutional social supports and solutions.

As a mom, I know it’s a drag to clean up, but it’s just one of life’s chores. To some extent, capable adult people are obligated to clean up after those who aren’t able to care for themselves.

We all must do these chores to see better results. I want to feel proud of our city as do other Winnipeggers. Yes, we face complex social issues, too, but first, we all have to do better at taking out, containing and disposing our trash. We deserve a cleaner city.

All of us can be part of this solution.

Joanne Seiff is a Winnipeg author and freelance writer.