Since I've pretty much given up looking for work I've taken to prowling the neighborhood and filling up a large bag full of garbage a day.
It hardly makes a dent. The Garbage? Needles, syringes, little meth/coke dime bags, condom and condom wrappers, lots of candy-bar wrappers, McDonald's, Tim Hortons, Straws, branded 7/11 and Circle K shit, a surprising number of doggy-doo-doo bags that seem to just end up tossed in the snow, (why bother bagging it if you're not going to trash it?), lots of dogshit unbagged, and cigarette butts. Lots of nasty smokers out there. I smoke, but all my butts end up in the garbage. ALL of them.
So, while picking up the unending garbage in the neighborhood I think about possible solutions to the problem. It's one that's bothered me since coming back (the city is noticeably dirtier every year), and especially since spring last year when driving through Banff I saw volunteers gathering rubbish by the side of the road - large autumn-leaf bags, one every 50 or 100 yards, and I thought "Who fucking litters in a National Park?" - but, the point really is, who fucking litters period?
How to solve it:
2 Ways. One - charge a surcharge to the consumer, based on the amount of litter collected. X amount of McDonald's/Tim Horton's/Water Bottles/ etc trash per square meter equals this tax charged to the companies vending and manufacturing the rubbish. Hopefully this helps to encourage people to trash their rubbish and not throw it out the window. Want shit food/coffee at cheap prices? Throw your garbage in the trash, folks.
The Second: Real consequences for litterers and an initiative to enforce anti-dumping and littering laws. Banff could easily afford cameras that caught people littering along the highway. The consequences? Easy. First offence - an orange jumpsuit and a 40 hour work week beside the highway or in the neighborhood you live / litter in spent picking up rubbish. Like the good-ole days, forced labor road crews. Plead guilty and it's a week - prove your innocence and you go free. Argue your innocence and be proved guilty and you now have 2 weeks. No pleading extenuating circumstances (there are none for littering) - no time to arrange your affairs, say goodbye to loved ones, you're on the crew tomorrow, if you get fired from your job - too bad, you should have considered it before you littered.
Anyways, with both the Provincial and Civic governments we have in place there will be no remedies for this.
Maybe I should start saving the trash I collect and do a series of "Alberta Murals", "Mountain Views" and the "Big Sky Looking West...".
Never was there a social issue so visible, so easy to solve, and so little will to solve it.