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Garbage on the streets
After many years living in Brussels, I still find it appalling how dirty our streets are. Many locals (from neighbours to local politicians) seem not to mind torn garbage bags, dog-poo and litter being scattered all over the place. What can we do about it? How can we move authorities to really take action? Which political parties have a real agenda to make of Brussels a clean city? Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance!
Suggestion: Form a group of disgruntled people; all come up with a plan and ideas; ask people from your local City Hall to come and discuss with all of the group. As an incentive ask your local authorities and the government to give a tax benefit for those who join the group and have collected litter and dog poo. The litter and dog poo can be collected by group members and put into specific containers at certain collection places (each container can have a members code to open the container). For example, the person who lives at street 39 types in code s39 to open the container and dumps the litter or poo into the container. When full then your city hall comes and collects the container.
As incompetent as its politicians generally are, Brussels actually has fairly (pro)active garbage collection. I also see waste containers on almost every street corner. If Brussels is dirty, that's almost entirely on the local population, too many of which simply don't care. Compare and contrast with a city like Leuven (unless it's a Friday morning). It's not something that can be changed top-down, so I don't have much hope.
Get cities to run a competition. Which city in Belgium has the cleanest streets? Nothing to stop a group of people who very much care about their area to start getting something done about it.
Singapore has tackled the problem succesfully : 500 SGD fine for littering
With signs fully visible in many parts of the city.
I am afraid there is no other way to educate people.
If only people would actually put their dog waste in bags and if only communes would put out bins for it or introduce fines! Firstly the local council are elected and accountable so try them as a first line, for example in my commune they run pick up waste days when they ask people to come together and pick up litter ascomm7nity exercise. We have poster dotted around saying in flemish flowers or litter? and it pretty much works, much Waste round here is the bloody cyclist lobbing energy drinks packs etc as they wiz by circuit training the hills. In rural areas it tends to be much clearner and it’s hers flemish and my neighbours used to vacuum their drives I kid you not! Try moving into the lovely rural areas ifit gets too bad!
