Still on the topic of litter - while the action plan focuses on marine litter, there is still a lot to be done to address land litter. One of the main setbacks in this case is enforcement. There is none, and, sad to say, many adults, who should know better, are not setting the right example for others or their children. So ticketing and other options have to be implemented to enact change. Chief environmental Officer Martin Alegria discussed the loop-holes that have contributed to this lax enforcement system.
Martin Alegria, Chief Environmental Officer, DOE
"We have this littering tickets from 1996 in the books under the summary jurisdiction act. It has been modified in 2003 and 2005 in order to strengthen it in the sense of 2 things; 1) to give the municipalities; the town boards and city halls the power for them to issue their own type of litter tickets under the assistance of the national government. That hasn't worked out as well as we thought. Secondly, the whole issue of littering from outside the city limits and that hasn't worked out either for many reasons; 1) it's a concerted effort. The department of the environment is not the only one that is involved, because there is prosecution. We depended a lot and still to a certain degree depend on police department's prosecution branch. Of recent we have our own internal lawyer, but before that it was dependent on police and perhaps 20 years that wasn't a priority. Crime is what was priority more for the DPP, the solicitor office and the prosecution branch of police. But we have to now revive that, coordinate better and see that now litter is now becoming more and more of a critical issue to address. Land based pollution, littering in this case. So we need to revive that."
Reporter
"Will you guys actually capitalize on those tickets? can you say how many persons have even been issued with those tickets?"
Martin Alegria
"We have issued over the past year or two if you could say a dozen or two would be too much and those are more on the highways; busses, trucks or things that we see along the highway. Why? because within city or town limits is the local government that by law are authorized to issue it. We can issue it, but we dont want to get involved in issuing a ticket to somebody that later on is not found or is not in that specific town, he or she was just visiting. So that is left more to the town or city hall to issue."
Reporter
"Will there be a collaboration that a serious move towards that, because people will continue to throw litter? You see them throw garbage out of the bus, but they are not going to do that in neighbouring Mexico, because of the enforcement."
Martin Alegria
"That's number one issue that we have seen, enforcement of the law, apart from other initiative such as the plastic regulation that should come on stream any time now. That's a national perspective too in terms of litter generated from plastic."
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