Saturday, April 2
11am - 3pm
sponsored by Ward 5 Councilmember Harry "Tommy" Thomas, Jr and ANC Commissioner Tina Laskaris
We will meet in the parking lot of Joseph Cole Community Center
1299 Neal St
promptly at 11am
DPW will be on hand with supplies, a truck, etc.
Everyone please come out to give our neighborhood a fresh start for spring, join your neighbors, make new friends
***Snacks and light refreshments provided***
Any questions please contact the Councilmember's office at 202-724-8028 or
ANC Commissioner Tina Laskaris at 202-549-0153
19 comments:
i'll be there. the neighborhood needs it. there are some stretches of trinidad avenue that look like a garbage dump.
Can someone explain why there is a near complete lack of sidewalk trash cans in our neighborhood? I'm constantly picking up trash on my street because some of my fellow neighborhood citizens don't seem to take quite as much pride in their neighborhood as they should. I walk my dog over to my girlfriends house in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and between here and there, I never have to walk more then two blocks to find a can to throw trash into. What's the deal with this and how can we get something done about it? Does anyone else on here think we should have some sidewalk cans?
BB: I'm with you. There are plenty of cans on Neal Street in front of Wheatley and Joe Cole, for example, but no can at the bus stop at the corner of Neal and Montello, which would be an obvious choice for one. I hope that many ANC commissioners will be at the clean-up (besides just Tina) so maybe we can grab their ear and ask them to push DPW about this.
I've got news for you BB, placing trash cans ain't gonna do much good.
What we really need (aside from the obvious) are those guys in blue walking around capitol hill/eastern market picking up trash every day.
On the subject of the blue Cap Hill BID dudes, has the subject of H Street joining the Capitol Hill BID ever resurfaced? Wasn't this issue brought up a few years ago but H Street biz owners declined the offer?
Agree with x8. Either people litter or they don't. It doesn't matter if the trash can is 10, 50 or 500 feet away.
I believe a lot of neighborhoods got rid of the trash cans/mail drop boxes after 9/11 due to the irrational fear of terrorists using them to place explosive devices.
Insider: That sounds like an urban legend.
X8 and Dave B: I disagree. My example of the bus stop at Neal and Montello - let's say you're walking down Montello to wait for the bus. If there's a can there, you might pick up garbage to dump when you get to the station. Without the can, there's no incentive to do so. It's a type of induced demand.
Once the sidewalks and streets have been 100% redone along H street I am really hoping biz owners will strongly consider using Capitol Hill BID. Otherwise all this time and money spent resurfacing H stret, Benning, Maryland and the Starburst will be for nothing.
Picking up other people's trash? That's extremely unsanitary and not a logical solution to the trash problem that's piling up.
Of course if it were a weekend and I have rubber gloves on, sure.
X8: Really?? What about those homeowners that are forced to place shopping bags on their fences? When ever I see those make shift shopping bag "trashcans" it always has trash in it. Will it eliminate the trash probablem? No. But it would certainly put a dent in it. The only area's in this city that employ daily sidewalk trash guys are business districts that pay for it as a collective and realize that the presence of trash on the ground has a huge psycological effect the people that are exposed to it. Those active sidewalk clean up crews are not found in residential areas. And as far as I know those crews don't venture away from the business areas to clean up the near by residential streets. Please list the residential neighborhoods where these guys can be found. (Its a serious question because it would point me in the direction on how to actually get that kind of service in our neighborhood). There are MANY other neighborhoods in this city that neither have the trash problem we have nor the active sidewalk clean up crews. One of the important common threads between them are sidewalk trashcans. I see it as common sense. If the city doesn't care enough about the lower income neighborhoods like ours enough to keep its streets and sidewalks clean, then it doesn't surprise me that many of the residents of those neighborhoods feel disenfranchised by their city. It may be a relatively small issue but I think it makes a large impact, especially on the youths in the neighborhood.
I suppose trash cans can't hurt. As far as the 9/11 thing, that would make sense downtown, but not in our NE neighborhoods.
There are cans at both ends of my block and almost everyday I find out what the after school snack of the day was by looking at the fresh litter on the sidewalk.
Maybe there would be more trash if the cans weren't there, but I doubt it.
Putting trash in cans is simple common decency. It is not something the city needs to take an active leadership role in to help people not feel disenfranchised. Stop being a piece of crap and littering and maybe you can take other steps towards becoming franchised (or enfranchised?).
Your empty empty bag of chips isnt that cumbersome that it needs to be discarded immediately.
BB -
Which areas are you talking about that have trash cans and no litter? Linoln Park? If so, I'm not even going to have this discussion with you.
I didn't realize the guys in blue did not service residential areas, now that I think about it I always see them on or very close to Pennsylvania Ave. There goes that idea.
I take the X8 almost every day and see a substantial amount of trash along that route especially past 14th st. Yet there are trash cans at every stop, sometimes more than 1. So I really don't see the connection of trash cans = less litter.
All it takes are a few bad apples who take the same route every day to ruin it for a whole block.
I once got off the X8 one evening and saw as the bus was driving away, some dude in the back slid open the window and casually tossed out a basket of at least a dozen chicken wing bones and his drink onto the street. And yeah, I agree with you 100% about the psychological effect trash has around a neighborhood.
I think I've seen the same guy x8 has. Beyond the littering aspect what also went through my mind was "what was wrong with your orange drink?". Was it skunked? Not what you were expecting? A bad year?
I didn't want to imply that trash cans are the sole solution to our trash problems. Frankly parents need to do a better job of teaching their children from an early age that throwing trash in the streets is unacceptable but thats a completely different discussion that is a bit more difficult to tackle. Theres's rarely a single solution to any one problem that faces a city or neighborhood, but simple steps do make a difference. I see it as a long term impact solution. I'm not asking the city to take every litter bug by the hand and walk them to a trash can. I'm just asking that the city atleast give us the reasonable opportunity to throw our trash away. I for one will hold onto my trash for miles before I throw it on the ground. But I think its pretty likely that there are alot of people that have nothing against putting trash in a can but when faced with the choice of holding onto it for 5 blocks and throwing in carelessly to the wind will choose the latter. I believe there is a middle ground of people that more cans would successfully target. And yes, all neighborhoods have trash issues including the Lincoln Park neighborhood but you have to admit that there's significantly LESS trash in the neighborhoods south of Maryland Ave. I walk all over the neighborhoods in that area frequently and its the exception that you find significant piles of trash blowing around. I pick up a shopping bag full of trash from in front of my house on a daily basis. And we need to make a distinction between residential streets, busines corridors and streets with a high level of foot traffic. Of course locations in front of major bus stops and H St will have more trash. More people = more trash regardless of how many cans you provide. But the majority of the streets in our neighborhood are neither comprised of businesses nor have a high level of pedestrian traffic. Yet if you judged my street by the level of trash that builds up on a daily basis you think I was opporating a chinese take-out or picking up bus loads of people to drive them downtown. Its not the presence of trash I object to, DC is a major city and it comes with the territory. What I object to is the shear amount of it compared to other similar neighborhoods with more accessible trash cans.
I live in the 1200 block of Florida and every single day, I find empty candy wrappers on my front steps and yard. Sometimes sticky bun wrappers with ants crawling all over them. Apparently, DPW places trash cans at intersections but not in the middle of the block. Since the city is broke as it is, good luck getting more trash cans. Common decency is the key, which the souls wandering up and down Florida seem to lack.
This is a class issue.
Go.
Maybe bb has a point. While riding past the starburst intersection I counted 6 trash cans on that concrete peninsula. Didn't see one wrapper, bottle, bag or condom wrapper on the ground.
However I don't recall ever seeing any trash cans in the residential areas of capitol hill or the other more affluent areas of DC. Only along bus routes. Yet those neighborhoods remain litter free. So it's hard to make an arguement that trash cans will help any.
It's definitely worth a try though. Feel free to yank one of the cans out along Maryland avenuen north of H/Benning and put them on your street. They serve no purpose over there apparently.
With trash cans come other problems...some people use them as their household trash cans. I've seen people come out of their houses with several bags, walk to the public trash can on the corner, and dump their trash in there -- or put it next to the can if it doesn't fit. I've seen cars pull over next to a trash can and the driver get out to dump a few bags of household trash in the public can, filling it up. I'm glad they were putting the trash in a can rather than just dumping it in an alley, but that is not the point of these trash cans.
I have also heard tales of the cans being used for illegal dumping of bulk trash, like mattresses, but haven't witnessed that myself.
On a more positive note, a young girl in the apartment building across the street from me lobbied to get a public trash can in front of her building. You can get them, but you have to ask and be at least as persuasive as a twelve year old.
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