I have been prompted to write this letter by the piece in Friday’s edition of The Telegram about the jogger who picks up litter.
Since we inherited a dog from our youngest son four years ago we have walked our Casey twice daily. I usually walk the dog in the evening and Donna does duty in the morning. It had been our habit to pick up a few pieces of litter during these walks so we decided to see what we could pick up if we put our mind to the task for seven days.
This photograph documents the result of our experiment.
Our walks take us over familiar ground daily so the litter we picked up comes from streets walked over several times during the seven-day period.
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To me this means that littering is a chronic problem that a single cleanup will not solve. We continue picking up litter daily, with Donna being the most dedicated to the task.
Each day we meet other people walking their dogs and wonder at the impact we would all have on the cleanness of the city if each dog walker picked up just a few pieces of litter during their walks.
This experiment and the subsequent conclusions we have drawn on the source of the problem, has lead me to wondered exactly what Clean St. John’s accomplishes with the $55,000 of taxpayers’ money they receive from the city annually.
Certainly, any positive results from their efforts are difficult to find and the board of directors and their general manager should be ashamed at the ineffectiveness of their efforts to date.
A simple public awareness campaign to encourage dog walkers, and all pedestrians, to pick up a few pieces of litter instead of walking past would be a good place to start if they are really interested in making a difference to the cleanliness of our city.
Barry Imhoff
St. John’s
