'A sight for sore eyes': Spring clean up efforts underway across Regina
As snow melts around Regina, garbage that has accumulated throughout the winter is appearing at a quick pace.
In the city’s North Central neighbourhood, White Pony Lodge is making an effort to combat the trash left behind by winter.
For the next three weeks, weather permitting, the community run organization is leading neighbourhood clean ups on Thursday evenings.
“Thursday evenings - before garbage pickups - we’ll be going around and going through a few different alleys, picking up as much garbage as we can, pulling out bins and making sure they’re not over full,” Leah O’Malley, the chair of the board of White Pony Lodge, said.
White Pony Lodge is partnering with Regina Dumping and Hauling and the North Central Community Association to clear garbage of all sizes away from the north central area.
O’Malley said she hopes it will make the community safer.
“There’s always things in the garbage that you don’t want lying around and flying around all the time,” O’Malley said.
Beyond that, it’s about making the neighbourhood feel more comfortable.
“We want to improve the look of the neighbourhood at the same time. I think it’s really important for us to point out and to prove that our neighbourhood is worth caring for,” O’Malley said.
On May 6, White Pony Lodge plans to host an entire day of volunteer clean up with any other community organizations and businesses that want to be involved.
Although White Pony Lodge focuses its efforts in one specific area, other parts of the city are seeing their share of trash left by winter, too.
The Saskatchewan Landlord Association said it’s the busiest time of year for its members, as more people move out of properties or gut their rentals during their spring cleaning efforts.
It’s landlords who are on the hook for ensuring properties remain tidy.
“It becomes a sight for sore eyes pretty quickly,” Cameron Choquette, the CEO of the Saskatchewan Landlord Association, said.
“Under the Clean Communities Bylaw for the city, ticketing offences are going to property owners and not tenants. Without consistent babysitting of properties, landlords will typically discover some of that trash that was covered by snow over the winter.”
In order for all residents to keep their properties and neighbourhoods as tidy as possible, Choquette recommends putting garbage in its proper place.
“If that’s the blue bin or the black bin, or in the case of mattresses or larger household items that shouldn’t go in the black bin, they go directly to the landfill,” he said.
“We need tenants to really comply which those property-specific rules so that excess garbage doesn’t need to be collected because unfortunately every time we call another garbage truck to come and service a property, those are excess costs over and above the traditional service charges, which ultimately get paid for by the tenant.”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
House of Commons Speaker Greg Fergus survives vote calling for his ouster
Greg Fergus survived a vote to oust him as House of Commons Speaker on Tuesday, but with close to half of MPs expressing a loss of confidence in him, he faces a precarious path forward in maintaining order in Parliament.
'It was hell': Israeli mother held hostage with her children describes 51 days in captivity
Hagar Brodutch, her three children and four-year-old neighbour were kidnapped by Hamas-led militants from their home in Kfar Aza, Israel on Oct. 7 and held for 51 days. They were released in November, but Brodutch says her thoughts are never far from those still being held in Gaza.
'Unruly passenger' forces WestJet flight to make emergency landing in B.C.
A WestJet flight heading to Calgary had to make an emergency landing in northern B.C. Monday due to an incident involving an 'unruly passenger,' Mounties say.
P.E.I. kiteboarder 'lucky to be alive' after shark attack in Turks and Caicos
A professional kiteboarder from P.E.I. says he has been seriously injured in a shark attack that occurred while he was snorkelling in the Turks and Caicos Islands last week.
Teen dies after being hit by train in N.W. Calgary
A teenager has died after being hit by a train in northwest Calgary on Tuesday afternoon.
Black bear kebabs make family sick with parasitic worms
It was supposed to be a celebration, but one family’s unique meal of black bear meat sent several members to the hospital instead.
'It's his vacation too': Jimmy the baby goat joins 2-week road trip across Canada
After Jimmy the baby goat was shunned by his mother, a New Brunswick man took the kid on a two-week road trip across Canada.
The double-level airplane seat is back. This time, there’s a first-class version
It’s the airplane seat design that launched a thousand memes and kickstarted a media storm. And now the double-level seat is back – only this time, with a twist.
New COVID-19 subvariants become the dominant strains in Canada
More than four years after COVID-19 effectively shut down the world, two new variants of COVID-19 have become the dominant strains of the novel coronavirus in Canada.