Saturday, July 11, 2009

stink in the city


It's been an unusual summer so far. The city is on a garbage strike...I was gone for two weeks and come back and boom, on Monday it happened. It's now been the end of the 3rd week and not sure there is an end in sight. The last time the city went on strike was 2002 and they were legislated back to work after 16 days.

However, considering how bad it COULD be, I think that people are handling it fairly well. They taped up all the garbage bins but people forced the plastic wrap off and continued to shove the bins full of garbage. There is litter on the streets, but really, what are people supposed to do? Bring it home so they can personally take it to one of the parks (ahem... dump sites)? Ridiculous. But it goes to show how much litter we create. Mostly, I've noticed fast food containers - pop cans, water bottles, Starbucks plastic frappe cups etc.

One of the bright sides to this all is that the summer has been relatively cool. The weather has been cooler than normal, but it's still not super pleasant walking down the street with the smell of leftover food. We'll see how this goes. Apparently, we have made it into newspapers around the US, warning people of our garbage! How's that for publicity? (Or is it, bad publicity is still good?)