Why is Canberra so unkempt?

To the person who said Perth’s public spaces are better maintained because of the mining boom – every town in Australia, rich and poor, demonstrates civic pride. Canberra is comparatively rich yet has fallen behind. It wouldn’t cost much to clean the bird poo from Garema Place once in a while, put a few more bins around town, replace a few old park benches. What a disgrace.

tim_c said :

dungfungus said :

Re: lack of rubbish bins, read this from the Arboretum policy guidelines:

Rubbish bins
Limited rubbish bins will be provided at the central visitor area. A ‘Take Your Rubbish Home’ policy will apply for the remainder of the site, consistent with the policy across Canberra’s urban parks and open space areas, Cotter Reserve and Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

Yes, I’d noticed it at Cotter Reserve – a distinct lack of rubbish bins. Now if only I had a spare plastic bag I could put my rubbish in to take it home in….

QPRC is now scoping banning plastic shopping bags also.

Meanwhile, the ACT government is delighted to accept all of Queanbeyan’s garbage at MLRMC.

The stuff from Bungendore area goes to the Tarago bio-reactor however. Go figure that one.

dungfungus said :

Re: lack of rubbish bins, read this from the Arboretum policy guidelines:

Rubbish bins
Limited rubbish bins will be provided at the central visitor area. A ‘Take Your Rubbish Home’ policy will apply for the remainder of the site, consistent with the policy across Canberra’s urban parks and open space areas, Cotter Reserve and Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

Yes, I’d noticed it at Cotter Reserve – a distinct lack of rubbish bins. Now if only I had a spare plastic bag I could put my rubbish in to take it home in….

OP forgot to mention the abandoned cars littering every major road in Canberra.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Robert Issell said :

Yes. Definitely it is a shame in so many areas and in so many ways.
Community pride does not exist.

How many shopfronts these days do you see cleaning or sweeping their shopfronts.

Don’t point the finger on this one completely at the government but everyone who lives in Canberra.

It is the responsibility of everyone. Start the “Clean up Canberra Campaign” and bring back civic pride.
Everywhere I look I see rubbish laying in the streets, in the gardens on the roads.
Where do we see the flower gardens, certainly not in our suburbs any more.

One of the big problems is that we have such a big footprint and so much to look after that unless we double our rates there will never be enough money to employ the clean up team.

O don’t know if it is still the case, but when I used to work in the Mort Street area there were petrol powered leaf blowers going almost every morning around Civic. Occasionally after moving the piles of debris into the gutters a street sweeper would scoop them up. There were workers in hi-viz emptying the bins, watering the flowers in those street light-come pot plants. Of course I am going back to around 2010 so things may have changed.
There are still some isolated pockets of community pride around Canberra. On rare occasions I can see elderly folks on median strips and traffic islands picking up trash. Even some ratepayer funded government workers sometimes get out the elbow grease and some hessian bags to clean up parks and reserves. It doesn’t leave much of an impression though as litterbugs will be back the very next day to decorate Canberra with fast food packages and smashed beer bottles.

What ever happened to “Clean up Australia day”? I remember as a kid seeing advertisements on TV every year and participating in school organized rubbish collection days. This year, Sunday 4th March went by without my senses picking up a trace of activity surrounding this great event. There were No TV ads [though we seldom watch FTA], nothing in the mailbox and no spam on Facebook or my email inbox. Have they lost their motivation? Has the event been swamped by other useless advertising? If there were indeed posters at the shops or some other avenue of communication, it didn’t do enough to make me aware. Did anybody else miss it too?
According to a report in the CT, “More than 237 tonnes of rubbish were collected by volunteers in the ACT in 2016.”. I don’t know if this was all on one day or across the year, but wow! Talk about a load of rubbish.

Is it sheer laziness causing this problem? Or is it the lack of rubbish disposal receptacles? In my opinion it is probably more the latter. Apart from the local shopping centers, there are seldom any bins around for you to dump your waste when out and about. On sports grounds for example, they have large dumpsters in the car park, but usually they are sealed up with chains and impenetrable padlocks. Why? Why do they need an industrial sized skip bin for an oval, where a normal amount of trash would barely fill a couple of Sulo bins? Why keep it locked to prevent people disposing of their coffee cups and water bottles? Would it be of more usefulness to have proper facilities so that the oval doesn’t become a dumping ground? Surely it is easier for the council to empty some domestic wheelie bins than to have to pick up after people because the only bins on site are closed up like bank vaults.
I know people should just take their trash home with them, but people are by nature quite lazy. They won’t walk 300 meters to the other end of the field to dispose of one muesli bar wrapper, then miss out on watching their child score a goal or do a personal best in an event. People are selfish and do not care about their environment. It is a side effect of changing attitudes in society, where everything is about “them” and nothing else is as important. Even at sporting events where there are bins located within throwing distance, spectators will leave their wrappers and bottles under the seat or in cup holders. It is total laziness, a sad consequence of not taking pride in oneself, but it does provide employment for cleaning staff.

It is not just society that has taken this devolutionary process though, our government is taking shortcuts too. One example is the way they approach footpath repairs. Instead of ripping up and replacing broken and irregular trip hazards, they have now adopted the grinding approach. By simply shaving off the raised section to smooth over the problem, a temporary fix is applied. The section of path is still broken into pieces and the underground shift that caused the problem is still present and will continue to move up and down. So in another few months as ground moisture increases, the piece of cracked footpath will destabilize further, then again become a hazard to pedestrians. The gaping cracks left behind by this process are sometimes large enough to swallow the wheel of a stroller. There is no effort made to fill it, they just move on to the next section.

Re: lack of rubbish bins, read this from the Arboretum policy guidelines:

Rubbish bins
Limited rubbish bins will be provided at the central visitor area. A ‘Take Your Rubbish Home’ policy will apply for the remainder of the site, consistent with the policy across Canberra’s urban parks and open space areas, Cotter Reserve and Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

Robert Issell said :

Yes. Definitely it is a shame in so many areas and in so many ways.
Community pride does not exist.

How many shopfronts these days do you see cleaning or sweeping their shopfronts.

Don’t point the finger on this one completely at the government but everyone who lives in Canberra.

It is the responsibility of everyone. Start the “Clean up Canberra Campaign” and bring back civic pride.
Everywhere I look I see rubbish laying in the streets, in the gardens on the roads.
Where do we see the flower gardens, certainly not in our suburbs any more.

One of the big problems is that we have such a big footprint and so much to look after that unless we double our rates there will never be enough money to employ the clean up team.

O don’t know if it is still the case, but when I used to work in the Mort Street area there were petrol powered leaf blowers going almost every morning around Civic. Occasionally after moving the piles of debris into the gutters a street sweeper would scoop them up. There were workers in hi-viz emptying the bins, watering the flowers in those street light-come pot plants. Of course I am going back to around 2010 so things may have changed.
There are still some isolated pockets of community pride around Canberra. On rare occasions I can see elderly folks on median strips and traffic islands picking up trash. Even some ratepayer funded government workers sometimes get out the elbow grease and some hessian bags to clean up parks and reserves. It doesn’t leave much of an impression though as litterbugs will be back the very next day to decorate Canberra with fast food packages and smashed beer bottles.

What ever happened to “Clean up Australia day”? I remember as a kid seeing advertisements on TV every year and participating in school organized rubbish collection days. This year, Sunday 4th March went by without my senses picking up a trace of activity surrounding this great event. There were No TV ads [though we seldom watch FTA], nothing in the mailbox and no spam on Facebook or my email inbox. Have they lost their motivation? Has the event been swamped by other useless advertising? If there were indeed posters at the shops or some other avenue of communication, it didn’t do enough to make me aware. Did anybody else miss it too?
According to a report in the CT, “More than 237 tonnes of rubbish were collected by volunteers in the ACT in 2016.”. I don’t know if this was all on one day or across the year, but wow! Talk about a load of rubbish.

Is it sheer laziness causing this problem? Or is it the lack of rubbish disposal receptacles? In my opinion it is probably more the latter. Apart from the local shopping centers, there are seldom any bins around for you to dump your waste when out and about. On sports grounds for example, they have large dumpsters in the car park, but usually they are sealed up with chains and impenetrable padlocks. Why? Why do they need an industrial sized skip bin for an oval, where a normal amount of trash would barely fill a couple of Sulo bins? Why keep it locked to prevent people disposing of their coffee cups and water bottles? Would it be of more usefulness to have proper facilities so that the oval doesn’t become a dumping ground? Surely it is easier for the council to empty some domestic wheelie bins than to have to pick up after people because the only bins on site are closed up like bank vaults.
I know people should just take their trash home with them, but people are by nature quite lazy. They won’t walk 300 meters to the other end of the field to dispose of one muesli bar wrapper, then miss out on watching their child score a goal or do a personal best in an event. People are selfish and do not care about their environment. It is a side effect of changing attitudes in society, where everything is about “them” and nothing else is as important. Even at sporting events where there are bins located within throwing distance, spectators will leave their wrappers and bottles under the seat or in cup holders. It is total laziness, a sad consequence of not taking pride in oneself, but it does provide employment for cleaning staff.

It is not just society that has taken this devolutionary process though, our government is taking shortcuts too. One example is the way they approach footpath repairs. Instead of ripping up and replacing broken and irregular trip hazards, they have now adopted the grinding approach. By simply shaving off the raised section to smooth over the problem, a temporary fix is applied. The section of path is still broken into pieces and the underground shift that caused the problem is still present and will continue to move up and down. So in another few months as ground moisture increases, the piece of cracked footpath will destabilize further, then again become a hazard to pedestrians. The gaping cracks left behind by this process are sometimes large enough to swallow the wheel of a stroller. There is no effort made to fill it, they just move on to the next section.

Simple response… we have a glorified Shire Council who spend time pretending that they are important enough to sit with the adults at COAG and other forums, instead of just dealing with their own after after-school chores.

I say we should take their pocket money away and grounded them.

Yes. Definitely it is a shame in so many areas and in so many ways.
Community pride does not exist.

How many shopfronts these days do you see cleaning or sweeping their shopfronts.

Don’t point the finger on this one completely at the government but everyone who lives in Canberra.

It is the responsibility of everyone. Start the “Clean up Canberra Campaign” and bring back civic pride.
Everywhere I look I see rubbish laying in the streets, in the gardens on the roads.
Where do we see the flower gardens, certainly not in our suburbs any more.

One of the big problems is that we have such a big footprint and so much to look after that unless we double our rates there will never be enough money to employ the clean up team.

The ACT government has to find $1.73B for each of 7 tram lines and cover a doubling of maintenance and operating costs per passenger. Bitumen now covers the paving circles on Cooyong Street in Civic where once there were street trees – obviously no intention of replacement. Our streets are only swept every 3 months rather than once a week in other major cities like Perth – hence the blue-green algae in the Lake.

When you have a human rights commission for a population the size of Canberra and spend a quarter of the funding on executive salaries there is not much left for basic services that people actually want. I still think visually Canberra still looks relatively tidy compared to other cities, where I see the real neglect is delivering services to rate payers that many other jurisdictions seem to receive. This extends from providing recycling and green waste bins to not turning away outpatients for ultrasounds and X-rays at our hospitals.