'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.”