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The return of litter

Tales from the dump
with Walt Humphries
Friday, June 27, 2008

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It has been a few weeks since the city's spring cleanup and already I notice that litter is starting to accumulate in some areas.

If we want to keep the city clean, we need more people cleaning up on a regular basis and we need a crackdown on the people who are littering.

I still think the city needs to adopt a zero-tolerance-to-litter policy and get tough with a little more anti-litter enforcement. A few signs against littering might also help. People who take pride in their sense of place don't litter so we need to instill that sense of pride in the people who do litter.

It never ceases to amaze me that people drive out to local lakes, picnic areas and boat launches to get away from it all and then leave behind a mess for other people to clean up. So it is not just the city but also the territorial government that has to adopt a zero-tolerance-to-litter policy.

Our dump, like all the dumps in the NWT and Nunavut for that matter, needs to install anti-litter methods of containing garbage because garbage on windy days does blow out of the dump. Just take a look in the bush around the dumps and you will see what I mean.

The litter that ends up in our lakes and rivers is particularly bothersome because it does affect the aquatic animals in ways we don't see easily. It is starting to dawn on people that some plastics are not good for humans and they certainly aren't good for animals, birds and fish.

They often eat them and there are documented cases where their stomachs get full of indigestible plastics and the animals starve to death. Plastics in the environment are much more insidious than people think and world wide they are becoming a major item of pollution.

They also are made from oil, which is getting more expensive so I really think we have to cut down on our use of and disposal methods for plastic. If it can't be reused, recycled or composted it shouldn't be made.

A lot of people will think that this is an extreme position but I think it is only a matter of time before people realize it is the only sensible and sustainable solution to our garbage problems.

I find it interesting the numbers of stories making the news about people stealing metal to sell it as scrap. Down south people are stealing funeral urns, park statues, lightning rods, copper wire right off of transformers, metal roofs, copper pipe from cottages and mufflers right off of cars.

It is a growing problem and one that needs to be seriously addressed. It is particularly sad because the amount of money the crooks get for the salvaged metal is a fraction of what it costs to replace the items.

Almost all metals can be recycled and it has long been my position that no metal should be allowed to go into dumps or landfills. It should all be recycled. Eventually all our old dumps will be mined for their metal content because they have richer ore in them then most mines do. The cost and work that goes into finding a mine, developing it and processing the ore is considerable and that effort is wasted if we just turn around and throw the metal away.

As a prospector, I know that ton for ton the richest ore body in the North right now is the Yellowknife city dump and that is ironic. It has gold, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, copper, brass, iron, platinum and dozens of other metals and minerals in it.

- Walt Humphries is a well-known Yellowknife artist and prospector