Vancouver: City Of Garbage

garbage_binVancouver residents boast of living in the world’s cleanest, prettiest and most pristine city in the world however this statement, and the city in general, is being buried under a mass of disgusting garbage.

I live in the downtown core and take my dog for walks on the streets of downtown Vancouver. The weekends are the worst with Sunday morning a rubbish nightmare as all the drunken idiots that bus in from the outlying communities consume vast amounts of alcohol along with paper plated slices of pizza and cardboard cartons of chinese, indian and thai food.

Bottles, vomit and food containers are spread over the streets and sidewalks of this city, with broken glass an obstacle course for both my dog and I as we wind our way through the filth. The smell of urine is accompanied by occasional piles of human faeces dropped in plain sight along the sidewalk or hidden in store fronts or behind benches and planters. My dog, much to my disgust, tends to find these little gems.

I’m not sure why the quantity of litter is increasing but it may be an imported issue exacerbated by young, inconsiderate immigrants that don’t understand how their bad habits impact this city. Garbage and pollution may be one of the reasons they left their homelands but they think nothing about bringing the problem to their new home.

Homeless people also spill filth into back allies and streets as they hunt for bottles and anything else of worth in garbage cans and bins. I’ve watched dumpster divers inside bins, throwing garbage out and on to the street as they search through the bags and boxes. A restaurant owner in the building behind mine has to clean up his dumpster area every morning even though he locks and chains them shut to keep out the pickers. Homeless people can be quite motivated when it comes to digging through garbage cans however not nearly so when it comes to cleaning up their mess.

I took the photos below over the course of a month or so and only photographed the worst offenses, bypassing the ubiquitous cups, paper plates, bags, clothing, diapers, food and vomit I see every day in my travels to and from work. I have moved garbage dumped less than a few feet from an available garbage can and picked up shit that various douche-bags have dropped in front of my building but I can’t do it all. I would need to be on the streets for hours a day just to make a slight impact on the piles of filth that’s dumped on our streets. It makes me sick and I’m tired of it.

To those that desecrate our streets, I damn you to eternal hell. A hell full of your own garbage and no one to pick it up.

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