Streets fill with trash, including discarded gloves and masks
Like most Montrealers, Notredame-de-grâce resident David Glashan has been noticing the discarded surgical gloves, masks and other garbage cluttering city streets and parks.
Unlike most people, he is doing something about it.
For the past two weeks, Glashan has been picking up trash in N.D.G. Park at Sherbrooke St. W. and Girouard Ave. and on neighbouring streets.
He uses a device from a dollar store for picking things up so he doesn’t have to touch discarded objects directly.
Glashan said he has had time on his hands since being temporarily laid off from his job with a municipal landscaping company.
“I was going to the park and I saw a lot of trash around and decided to be productive, for my own mental sanity,” he said.
Early spring is never a pretty time in Montreal, but this year is worse than usual because the city has put street cleaning on hold while it focuses on essential services during the COVID-19 crisis, while also monitoring the spring flooding situation.
On March 25, Montreal delayed the start of parking restrictions for street cleaning by a month, to May 1.
The Montreal regional health authority has designated street-cleaning as a non-essential service at this time, said Geneviève Jutras, a spokesperson for Mayor Valérie Plante.
However, the city is in the process of determining which operations could now resume gradually, including street cleaning, Jutras said.
“We reiterate that cleanliness is everyone’s business and that it is not permitted to throw waste on the street, regardless of the type of waste, she added.
But Monique Yale, a retiree who walks her poodle, Filou, every day in the downtown Quartier Latin neighbourhood, said she has to wade through discarded gloves, masks and other trash.
She worries for Filou’s safety and washes his paws with soap and water as soon as they get home, as well as her hands.
“It’s just as polluting and infectious as dropping syringes,” Yale said.
Once, she saw a woman dumping her gloves on the ground while getting into a car with her partner after getting groceries. When she protested, the woman screamed at her, “Stay inside,” said Yale, 69.
Sue Montgomery, the borough mayor of Notre-dame-de- Grâce— Côte-des-neiges, said she’s been getting a lot of complaints about the filthy streets.
“The problem is, we have fewer workers,” she said, noting that some blue-collar workers are on leave after showing symptoms of COVID -19.
“I am shocked,” Montgomery said about the large number of items dropped on the street.
“To throw them on the street is inconsiderate of other people,” she added.
If you use disposable gloves and a mask to go shopping, bring a plastic bag with you to put them in and dispose of it at home, Montgomery advised.
Since the city is not sweeping up pebbles from the winter, residents could sweep the sidewalk in front of their homes until city services are back to normal, she said.
Glashan said helping to keep the park tidy is brightening his own mood at a difficult time.
“I don’t know why more people aren’t doing it, to be honest with you,” he said.