Weyburn's Cleanup Committee undertook a worthy goal as they began planning for this year's cleanup campaign, in itself a worthy effort as it beautifies our city to make it a quality community to live in, both for our residents and for those who are visiting here.
A stated goal of the committee was an emphasis on preventing littering, which is after all a major cause of the refuse lining our streets, alleys and parkways.
Perhaps we should go a little further, and use some overt incentives (or disincentives) to keep people from tossing their refuse onto the ground, often without even a thought about whether there's a garbage can in the area.
When a resident is out and he or she blithely tosses aside that hamburger wrapper or empty coffee cup out the window, or lets their dog poop pretty much wherever they want without regard to cleaning up after themselves, this is a denigration of the community, particularly when that refuse starts piling up in the ditches, along streets and alleyways.
Many years ago, in an effort to encourage recycling, an "environmental fee" was imposed for many of our recyclable drink containers, even for ones with no return on them, like two-litre and four-litre milk jugs.
So, maybe now is the time to impose an "environmental fee" to help encourage people to put garbage in the garbage can instead of all the ground. We don't need our streets and alleyways and fences collecting mounds of trash and wrecking our home community.
This fee could then be used for local charitable green purposes, in particular to support a community's cleanup efforts, or a community's landfill operation, or to support a charitable organization who could be out doing some of the cleanup of the community in return for a donation.
In addition to a fee, which could charged at the retail outlet, the city police and RCMP could bump up their enforcement of littering laws and bylaws that are already on the books, some with hefty fines.
If the laws and bylaws we have aren't enforced, what is to stop our children, our teenagers, indeed our adults, from just heaving garbage out the window or dropping it along the park path whenever they feel like it?
And lastly, what about community pride? Come cleanup time, most people of all ages do take part - but why are litterers making a mockery of our efforts? Let's do something about it, people.
