Let’s face it, as much as we relish spring and the melting of the snow, the blooming of the flowers, and the return of life all around us, spring is dirty. The garbage that’s been buried under snow on the side of the street & sidewalks is suddenly exposed. Snow banks on the side of the road turn into messy brown and black messes as they melt, leaving behind the months worth of sand and gravel. Our backyards reveal all those little piles of dog pooh that we didn’t pick up because it was too cold. (pick them up now before they thaw!) And the garbage! Everywhere the garbage and litter that has accumulated over the winter.
Yup, it’s an ugly dirty messy time.
So the cleanup begins. The City gets out the road sweepers, parking lots hire people to use leaf blowers to blow the dust and dirt onto neighbouring properties, neighbourhood organizations pull together volunteers for a morning of picking up garbage, and some businesses jump in with their employees taking the time to clean up the streets and sidewalks in the downtown.
And, then we are done! We have cleaned the city.. until next spring. A couple of hours of cleaning is good enough.
But it isn’t. It doesn’t come close. Winnipeg is filthy year round.
The Dirtiest City
I have been lucky to travel to most of Canada’s big cities. And I can unequivocally say that Winnipeg is the dirties city in Canada. I was having a chat a while ago with a City Councillor about the amount of garbage in Winnipeg, and he agreed with me when I said I thought it was the dirtiest city in Canada.
Garbage, Garbage Everywhere
While it’s easy to look at the City and blame them for the mess, we are all culpable. We all have a responsibility to do more and do better to make the city cleaner. The horrible mess that is exposed in spring has built up over the winter because we allowed it to. The city isn’t magically cleaner in the summer, the garbage everywhere remains.
No matter where you go in the city, there is garbage. Particularly in the Exchange District and in the Downtown, the prime areas where the City promotes itself, where tourists and visitors come, where businesses try to be players on the national and international stage, Winnipeg has a waste strewn public realm.
The public, and particularly downtown workers, have decried the state of Winnipeg for years. Downtown BIZ spends $1.0M a year cleaning up the litter. Take Pride Winnipeg has reviewed and rated neighbourhoods in the past, and it is pretty much everywhere in the city that public garbage is a problem: Downtown, North end, South end, West end, East side.. everywhere.
In the fall of 2024, there was a week of media stories about the state of downtown Winnipeg. People working downtown just said they couldn’t keep up with the litter.
One woman's comment in the above article hit the nail right on the head:
“the root is more than garbage and drugs and people on the street.”
In Winnipeg’s downtown, she’s right. But, looking at Take Pride Winnipeg’s reporting, this isn’t just a downtown problem. The woman is right, it is an indicator of a larger issue in the core, an issue that needs to be addressed immediately. Unfortunately, the City of Winnipeg’s response to the alarm raised ignored the larger issue and instead decided the problem was the garbage cans themselves.
The solution: locks!! yup, let’s lock up our garbage.. that’ll work… not a problem.
So a year later, new garbage cans were rolled out in select locations in downtown Winnipeg.
The Mayor says in the announcement that all Winnipeggers need to play a part in cleaning up, but the City of Winnipeg needs to lead the way.
“I’m willing to ask our staff to take an extra 10 seconds to deal with a locked bin to empty it. And the payoff is, we get a cleaner community where people can’t tamper with garbage bins and go through them and dump the contents all over the place,” he said.
Aside from the fact that the response ignores the larger issue identified a year earlier and places the blame on the shoulders of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our community, “people dumpster diving and spewing litter all over the place” - Tom Ethans. How is the roll out of the locked garbage bins making our downtown better?
So.. not so much.. pretty much the same as the old bins.
This needs everyone
The Mayor is right, everyone needs to do better. We all need to do our part. It isn’t just on the City to do better. Though if, as the Mayor says, the City needs to lead they need to do better than simply changing out the garbage cans. Obviously they need to invest in more cleaning, more emptying of overflowing garbage bins, to actually show that leadership for a more attractive city.
The Province
It’s not just the City of Winnipeg. The Province of Manitoba has to make changes to make Winnipeg, and the rest of the province, cleaner. One discarded item that proliferates our streets, sidewalks, and parks are drink containers. They are everywhere. If you visit any other town in Canada, large and small, you will not find water bottles, juice containers, and pop cans everywhere. It is only here in Manitoba where you will find those easily recyclable items so prolifically littered on our streets.
The Province of Manitoba is the only province that only has deposits on beer containers. There are no deposits on wine bottles, or pop cans, or water bottles, or juice boxes. Other provinces in Canada have deposits on those items. Most jurisdictions in the U.S. have deposits on those items. They are the proverbial low hanging fruit for recycling.
The data is pretty clear, we need to significantly improve our recycling programs. Deposit programs increase the rate of recycling by more than double.
Bottlebill.org has an overview of all the recycling & deposit legislation by province. Manitoba is a glaring outlier. Provincial Deposit Laws
Why this matters
This is a big issue. Obviously we all know that recycling is important for the environment. Most of the garbage blowing around our streets and neighbourhoods is recyclable. It is plastic, pop cans, and paper. All things that are incredibly easy to recycle.
This is important for our economic vitality. If we want to have businesses, visitors, and tourists come to Winnipeg, invest in Winnipeg, be part of Winnipeg, then we need to have our city be attractive. If those visitors, whether for investment or a short visit, need to feel that this is a beautiful and welcoming city. And Winnipeg is!! It is a beautiful and welcoming city. But that is hard to see past the mounds of garbage strewn on our sidewalks and parks.
It is important for safety. Winnipeg can appear like a city that has given up. Not just the garbage, but the condition of sidewalks, trees, benches, parks are all degraded. Our homeless population is growing and a prominent feature of our downtown. Public drug use is huge concern for residents and businesses. To quote the woman from 2024: “the root is more than garbage and drugs and people on the street.”. As long as we continue to try to tackle the symptoms, such as locking up garbage cans, removing bus shelters, and moving encampments along, we are not addressing the root of the problem.
It is important for our health. We all know the health concerns of garbage. When you volunteer in a community cleanup the warnings of what not to do are very long: always wear gloves, don’t touch garbage, don’t touch needles. All those directives are a recognition that coming into contact with the street garbage blowing around us can be a health hazard.
Smoking is bad for everyone’s health. Smoking is bad for the smoker and second hand smoke is a health hazard to those around them. Cigarette butts, the most common of street garbage, are also a significant health hazard. Those butts wash into our rivers and they do not break down. They are not made of “organic” material that will decompose. The butt on the sidewalk will last a long time after it is thrown on the ground.
New research is showing that they break down in the water, streams, rivers and oceans, into microplastics.
More research is being done on microplastics and the source of them. Researchers are finding microplastics in the Arctic, on mountain tops, at in the ocean. They are in animals right across the globe, and they are in us. And none of that is good.
Each Do Our Part
This is huge problem, in most cities (I was recently in Japan.. it’s not a problem there, there cities are spotless!). But it is the worst I have seen in Winnipeg. We each need to do so much more. This is not someone else’s problem, it is all of our problem.
Treating the “symptoms” by having locked garbage cans and yearly spring cleanups is not solving anything. We each need to be committed to the image of Winnipeg, the safety and dignity of all residents.
The Mayor said it starts with the City showing leadership, and he’s right. The Province needs to recognize their role in cleaning up the mess as well.
But that does not let any of us off the hook. We need to show that Winnipeg is a city that cares.
Right now, it looks like we don’t care.
brian
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