THERE’S NO QUICK CURE FOR TRASHY BEHAVIOUR

THE QUESTION WAS PROBABLY rhetorical, but Coun. Murray Martin was in earnest when asking how we might go about getting people to stop throwing their trash out along roadways and the like.

It was a question for which Inga Rinne and many others would like to have an answer.

In presenting an update on the activities of Woolwich Healthy Communities, Rinne noted that volumes were down when volunteers fanned out across the township earlier this spring for the annual cleanup day events. They still fished out all kinds of garbage from ditches, creek beds and other public spaces, but the quantities were down from previous years. Unfortunately, that may have more to do with ongoing cleanup efforts by groups and residents rather than some kind enlightenment among those who dispose of their trash wherever and whenever – from a thoughtless tossing of a coffee cup out of a moving car to the late-night dumping of loads of garbage in a secluded tree lot.

We’d like to think that growing environmental awareness would curb such actions, but we’ve seen growth in the incidences of dumping in proportion to the scaling back of the rural transfer stations, now completely shuttered.

It seems unlikely the volunteer efforts will be unnecessary, at least any time soon.

More than just candy wrappers and pop cans – perhaps written off as childish negligence – the long list of junk found along roadways, in parks and other public places reveals deliberate intent. A stray coffee cup or scrap of paper may have been caught in the wind, an old tire (or, more likely, 50 old tires) did not arrive on its own – somebody was bypassing the proper process.

Such garbage is not only unsightly, it is potentially hazardous: people should be able to use the parks and trails without worrying about what they may step on. Worse still, some people are not above dumping toxins such as used oil and household cleaners. Councillors got a reminder of that Monday night, as well, with the presentation to Safety-Kleen Canada of the first Woolwich CARES Business Leadership Award. The Breslau operation was cited for disposing of the contents of 24 rusty barrels – mostly unlabeled, with some marked as grease or oily water – illegally dumped last year on a farm lane near Conestogo.

With the property owners facing removal fees of up to $12,000 and receiving no help from government officials at any level, Safety-Kleen stepped in to do the work free of charge.

While that incident is on the extreme side of dumping, it highlights a problem that raises the as-yet unanswerable question raised at this week’s council meeting.

Environmental arguments aside, such dumping is completely inconsiderate. Our shared spaces are just that: shared. Everyone who dumps trash, even if it just that coffee cup or candy wrapper, is in fact leaving the mess for somebody else to clean up – people who make use of common areas are in essence forced to do the work.

Anyone who has ever walked along a roadside ditch, for instance, knows just how much garbage can accumulate in such places; it’s visible even from your car as you drive along, thus the need for something like the Adopt-A-Road program, whose volunteers can already be seen hard at work.

Maybe one day such efforts won’t be needed, but that day will be a long time coming.