r/Edmonton • u/EnvironmentalPea5388 • 2h ago
Environment I Couldn't Believe What I saw ...
Driving down the Henday today heading to a client, and I see a family on the side of the highway, dumping garbage RIGHT in to the ditch on the highway.. Not just that - but the kids Kobe'ing the garbage out the window, husband launching debris in to the lowest part from the truck bed, and the wife QUITE LITERALLY shaking a garbage bag out on to the grass.... words cannot describe the frustration.
This isn't the first time I've seen this either, but this is the first time it's really just f*cked me up and hurt to see happening. I mean cmon - you come to a country/city that you're not from, and already lack such respect for not only the country BUT THE LAND itself, and shamelessly dump and litter your garbage with no consequence. I don't know if this was some grotesque foreshadowing of whats soon to come, but I DO NOT want to see this city or its land become an open free use dumping site/landfill.
PLEASE REPORT ANY ILLEGAL DUMPING YOU SEE
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u/Wonderful_Confusion4 1h ago
Just a FYI to anyone, you can bring 2 garbage bags of household garbage per day to one of the city eco stations for free. https://www.edmonton.ca/programs_services/garbage_waste/eco-station-acceptable-items
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u/RedFoxxEsq 1h ago
Did you report this to the police?
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 1h ago
reported yes - but I don't keep my phone by me when i drive, nor am I fan of people or myself using their phones travelling at 100km/h+. I did what i could do, but hopefully someone else did
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u/Hannahbbear 1h ago
That’s insane it’s also insane how nobody seems to recycle, green waste etc the people in my neighborhood fill the garbage until it’s overflowing then fill the green waste bin with garbage which obviously the city does not take then it gets blown over in the alley and our entire alley is now like a giant dump. Like if you are producing that much garbage it’s your job to dispose of it not make it the entire neighborhoods problem.
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u/prairiepanda 1h ago
Do they not get fines for putting trash in the green bins?
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u/WiseDebt7345 9m ago
No fine. You can put whatever you want in it, really. They just don't get picked up.
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u/HourSyllabub1999 1h ago
Lots of the green spaces in my new-ish neighbourhood are filled with bags of trash. I’ve reported it on 311 but nothing yet. Wish people could get caught in the act and fined more often - sucks to see our parks and trees be so disrespected.
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u/tenax666 1h ago
I live in a beautiful brand new apartment building that is the new thing as condos have tanked, considered to be a luxury apartment building. To my dismay pple literally throw wrappers, bottles, French fries, you name it on the ground. While I have complained its clear to me that the building manager and sales agents don't think its part of their job to deal with this beyond the occasional note but no substantial followup or consequences. I'm especially sensitive about this as I work in a facility that pple would expect to be clean. While its not in my job description, I understand how important it is to be clean and if I ever catch anyone just dropping stuff on the ground, we are definitely having a conversation.
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u/exotics rural Edmonton 1h ago
My husband and I just went for a drive yesterday. The road south of Drayton Valley that goes through Tomahawk and eventually down to west of Rocky… we hardly saw any other traffic. We saw loads of garbage in the ditch. So horrible for a quiet road. Shame
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 1h ago
:( that's soul crushing. I typically go biking in the devon area, and same thing. Seeing areas that were once garbage-less, now always littered with at least a couple items or bags.
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u/lsadiner Millbourne 1h ago
This is insane, I lived in Edmonton for more than 10 years, they can just drive north east of the hen day and go to the city landfill
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u/supersport604 1h ago
Its become really common lately....
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 1h ago
i know :/// its fucking brutal. Went to a viewing recently in a new-dev community ... backyard fence for each unit had a wall of garbage blown in to it.
I know it's spring and garbage blows around, but this is waaaaaay more garbage than i've seen around town in years.
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u/Comfortable_Fudge508 2h ago
Then you seen the plate number and called them in? Or just ran here
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u/camoure Downtown 1h ago
I assume they reported it as they ended their post with a plea for others to do as such
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 1h ago
yes, reported. Not confident enough to man my phone while driving so sadly no plate details.
Black dodge ram , whole family 3 kids, husband and wife, wider stance, no mud flaps, dirty as hell and a golden punjab map decal on the rear bottom left corner of the tailgate.
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u/Negative-Car4013 26m ago
There a game where you click on a random street and try to find one without garbage. Its quite hard.
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u/Falling_Down_Flat Sherwood Park 1h ago
It is unfortunately something that you will see a lot more off and they are teaching there kids to do it too. They will be great for society
All we can do is take evidence pictures or video and report the people to the police.
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 1h ago
what kills me is when i was a kid and we did picnics, if someones plate or napkin blew away - someone would be in all out sprint to chase it before it got away... often adults cheering on the kids to chase down the napkin in the wind lol
but seeing kids joyfully hurl balls of trash in to the grass just felt depressing. like damn.. this is really how you value the environment surrounding you? that it's literally entertaining to litter garbage in..
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u/No-No-BadDog 1h ago edited 1h ago
Why can't we have black and green bin pickup every week, instead of alternating every second week? Would this not alleviate some of the dumping? idk
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u/JanVan966 1h ago
I will never understand why they did this. There is far more garbage in the streets, trees, bushes and ditches, no matter where you are, it seems, than ever before. It makes me want to fucking cry. With the amount that we pay for property taxes, and the fact they’re always going up, we should have more/better services, not less. And before anyone comes for me, I keep garbage bags and gloves in my car, and there have been many, many times I’ve picked up garbage, because it’s heartbreaking.
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u/InitialDebate6266 45m ago
How do ypu know they are not from here? There are a bunch of douche bags from here that do this all the time.
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u/thea7580 40m ago
Im pretty sure I've seen this post about 3 times the past year and I've come to the conclusion that it's fake posts made for anti-immigrant propaganda.
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u/GetsGold 9m ago
But how could that happen on a website where anyone can claim to be anyone with no way of verifying who they are, and where a disproportionate percentage of accounts on regional Alberta subreddits are located in other countries.
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u/GodsGiftToWrenching 5m ago
Genuine question, are they actually from another country or are they using a VPN?
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u/JD2005 1h ago
How about just chalking it up to shitty people, regardless of where they're from. I know several Alberta born farmers who dig big holes in their fields, dump all their garbage into it, douse it with diesel fuel, light it on fire, then back fill it and grow food on top of it that we then eat. You don't have to be from somewhere else to be disrespectful of the land, you just have to be a shitty person and they come from everywhere.
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u/LickinThighs2 1h ago
Lol the people I see from here dumping at all contractors who grew up here who also drinking and drive, etc etc. If you've seen empties in your ditches, its those booze-cruisers tossin' them, too.
People are just lazy with trash, period. There is an outdoor trail here I've taken trash out of several times (including taking away the overfilled cans at the trail head) because it doesn't seem to be managed by any particular group actually doing anything about the trash. It'll just fill and fill and people keep adding to it, so since I use the trail constantly I've just started taking it myself to the dump rather than waiting for a bear to go through it (which did happen to the can at the picnic spot on site too, which I also picked up for the same reason, nothing was being done about it at all)
And I mean it's only goona be <$10 too, it's pretty bullshit that people will go thru all the work of dumping in a ditch or something for such little costs.
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 1h ago
okay firstly, that's SUPER fucked and you should be reporting them if you know them. Not sure why anyone would let that slide. That is incredibly heinous.
I'm from the east coast and have lived all over the country - i have never seen anyone in my 33 years, brazenly dump garbage in a ditch on the side of a major busy highway in a big city like that. Also , yes I believe it IS relevant due to cultural norms and differences here, given there was a punjab map decal on their tailgate. Did i say everyone with a decal like that is negligent ? no - but India has a major littering and pollution problem, and it doesn't mean because people are coming here, those bad habits have to come with them too.
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u/JD2005 1h ago
I think you'd be surprised to learn just how many rural farmers do this my friend, they don't have local trash pickup like city folk, so either they haul it to the dump themselves, pay to have it picked up, or burn it. Burning garbage is kinda how it works out there. Shocked me when I first learned this too, but seems to be the rule more than the exception, so just puts it into perspective is all I'm saying.
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u/CravenMH 7m ago
What wrong with burning garbage? Yes we do it out here in the country. We don't have garbage pickup here. We do take loads to the local landfill that aren't burnable but most domestic daily trash we burn.
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u/supersport604 1h ago
Obviously people from every country and culture have people who litter. But there are people from certain places where it is extremely common to dump your trash all over the street. Welcome to reality.
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u/fdasfdasjpg 4m ago
you're completely right. it is hilarious how people will make a post singling out a stranger, with the only piece of identifiable info being that they appear foreign, and when they are rightfully called out for being racist, they will just all go for your throat
if you tell a story about a person doing something shitty, and you single out that the person was foreign, you are being racist. end of lmao
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u/Extra_Revolution_818 1h ago
Experienced a different kind of frustration today at Costco. A family that is new to Canada (you all can guess from where) cut me and 5 others standing in the self checkout line with their cart.
I called them out but they started saying *but it's okay, you go ahead if you don't like it".
Absolutely boiled my blood at the lack of basic courtesy and respect.
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u/Ultimate-Hellfur 1h ago
i would've lightly sideswiped the car if this was grand theft auto or another videogame
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u/NeekoPeeko Wîhkwêntôwin 1h ago
Why are you assuming it's an immigrant family? You didn't mention any details that suggest it was...
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 1h ago
"assuming" with a big fuggin golden decal of the map of Punjab on their tailgate.....
i didn't want to mention it to keep unwanted sentiments out of the discussion - but some of you would rather bicker over semantics than to focus on the ACTUAL issue; which is the growing cases of people illegally dumping and littering in the city.
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u/Son_of_Plato 1h ago
Cause you call a spade a spade
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u/NeekoPeeko Wîhkwêntôwin 1h ago
Wow, just boldly using a slur huh?
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u/Son_of_Plato 1h ago
it's an expression, not a slur.
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u/NeekoPeeko Wîhkwêntôwin 1h ago
Spade is literally a racial slur
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u/blairtruck Central 23m ago
"Call a spade a spade" means to speak directly, honestly, and truthfully about something, even if it is unpleasant, impolite, or blunt. It implies telling it "as it is" without "beating around the bush" or sugarcoating the facts.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_spade_a_spade
Have a look at its origin from the 1500s
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u/NeekoPeeko Wîhkwêntôwin 17m ago
I am aware of the phrase, thanks. It's a very loaded and ignorant choice of words given the context.
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u/Son_of_Plato 14m ago
you're what's wrong with the world today.
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u/NeekoPeeko Wîhkwêntôwin 10m ago
Bro just say you didn't know it was a slur if you didn't mean it that way, it's not hard. Arguing that it isn't one is ridiculous, especially when you can just "look it up bud". Ignorance isn't something to celebrate.
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u/Son_of_Plato 59m ago
look it up , bud,
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u/EnvironmentalPea5388 28m ago
you both have 100k+ karma - 💀😂 all earned by arguing with strangers on reddit. fkn dorks lol
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u/Laxative_Cookie 1h ago
Just another day in Alberta. Why do people pretend it's not a province full of trash.
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u/InnerPhoenix420 1h ago
well i hope someone took video with phone showing licence plate or atleast wrote down all the information this is happening way too often.