The streets of Montreal are still just as dirty even though the City had promised to bring forward its cleaning operations before the start of its real spring cleaning on Monday.
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“It’s always the same story when I come back to Montreal at this time of year. There is waste everywhere,” notes Mathieu Dufour, who has just arrived home after a few months in Portugal.
“On one side of the street, it’s disgusting. Everyone leaves the bins, the trash cans, on the ground, it’s disgusting,” says the man who lives in the Ville-Marie district.
On Fullum Street, empty recycling bins stood next to a ripped trash bag.
Photo Anouk Lebel
However, the City had promised to move forward with its cleaning operations in the face of the dirt revealed earlier by the melting snow this year.
Big cleaning
“We have made progress, but in March, it is difficult to launch the big operation. We are focusing on operations that can be done manually, in parks,” explains City spokesperson Philippe Sabourin.
In March, the City cannot replace shovels with brush brooms on its equipment, for fear of a new storm. It also restricts the use of water to prevent sidewalks from freezing.
The real big clean-up therefore begins on April 1, with the parking bans which will allow mechanical sweepers and tanker trucks to get rid of the rubbish which still litters the streets of the metropolis.
Fast food containers and cigarette butts make up the majority of waste in the public domain, according to Mr. Sabourin.
Containers and pieces of cardboard littered a sidewalk in the Ville-Marie district.
Photo Anouk Lebel
It will also be necessary to collect 150,000 tonnes of small rocks, the crushed stone that the City uses as anti-slip in winter.
$50M
The spring clean-up operation will last six weeks, mobilize more than 600 devices on the ground, 1,000 employees and will cost Montrealers $50 million.
Mr. Sabourin recognizes that there is still a lot of work to do after a “checkered winter”, which means that the last snow loading operation dates back to the beginning of January.
“When we load the snow in Montreal, we collect all the waste at the same time. The perception that it is dirtier is partly true and partly due to the fact that we did not have a snow loading operation,” he says.
“The geographical location and the weather conditions make it difficult to compare Montreal to another metropolis,” he adds.