It was Aid these past few days and trash has been quickly piling up, the trash cans are directly facing my house, so it's hard to ignore.

I have taken the car for a ride to try and see what other neighborhoods look like in a messy period such as this one, and surprisingly, out of the 4 neighborhoods I drove through (granted the sample size is rather small), mine is the only one where trash has piled up so much it had begun to take up significant portions of the road.

See for yourself:

That is what happens when garbage men and garbage trucks only care to pick up what's inside the trash cans and intentionally leave behind the exceptionally large volumes of trash on the ground, the sole reason for which they are on the ground is because of a lack of trash cans in the first place.

Yesterday the municipality of Raoued posted on Facebook priding themselves on cleaning up so many other neighborhoods that previously looked like mine as a result of their poor planning for the Aid.

How can I personally explain to myself, when I saw with my own two eyes when the garbage men clearly signaled to go, despite having left behind three times the volume of what they had picked up, that the reason for their decision isn't ultimately a clear example of the municipality's discriminatory behavior and a lack of fucks given if we (neighborhoods like mine) ever come to that realization.

When I saw them claiming victory on social media, I couldn't help but feel like the head of that municipality (whose name I could not find) thinks they're doing a good job, when in fact, it's quite the opposite, and that, friends, is so funny to me.

Clearly the municipality's president is sleeping pretty well at night, and that's kind of the purpose of these social media campaigns. It's just about them feeling good about themselves whether or not they are actually serving the city.

Update

Two trucks came by later in the day to pick up that mountain of trash. It goes without saying that this issue should have never happened in the first place, it is indicative of a systemic issue. Our municipality, and all the others, need to take a much more proactive approach to make sure this actually never happens again.

Some people are saying there should be a central location where trash that can accumulate during this particular occasion can be dropped off (by the people themselves). It's a good idea, but good luck enforcing it, and that makes it a bad first step.

I personally think a much more feasible first step would be for the government to attempt to instill a much greater sense of responsibility over the handling of trash of this nature on these occasions, such as by placing all of it in plastic bags. That would of course mean that the goal of the social media campaigns moves away from a hey-look-at-us, patting-ourselves-on-the-back approach to making worthwhile public service announcements with clear messaging on the issue and how we can collectively resolve it.

The plastic bag idea might obvious to anyone with a brain but you'd be surprised how little thought people put into handling their trash during festivities.

I would honestly love to hear other people's ideas, mine feels sort of contingent on higher levels of awareness, and cultivating that is really tricky. It takes a lot of work, but well, it's all up to us.