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news

Lake Shore’s Dump Sites Get the Blues

By David Topping

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Photos by Christopher Drost/Torontoist.


Out of sight, out of mind: the parking lots by Sir Casimir Gzowski Park and Sunnyside Park—the City’s two temporary waste drop-off sites just off Lake Shore Boulevard West—have undergone a slight remodelling over the past few days, just in time for this weekend’s nearby Honda Indy. The blue fences that enclosed the garbage being dumped at the site, hastily installed two weeks ago, are now all draped in calming translucent blue, a cheap and hasty Band-Aid that, as far as we’ve been able to figure out, no other dump sites in the city have gotten. Torontoist photographer Christopher Drost caught photos of the newly completed coverings on Thursday; an employee would neither confirm nor deny that the draping was put up for the car show this weekend, but, according to Drost, “said it made it look nicer for those driving along Lake Shore and the highway.” Sort of?

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Comments

  • http://undefined cheryl

    The dump site in Moss Park has also been covered with the translucent blue.
    Maybe because there’s still children playing soccer and baseball about 10 metres away? Too bad they can’t play basketball anymore; that’s where the trash is piled (higher than the net now). Strange how no one is protesting there, eh?

  • http://undefined deadrobot

    Sam Lowry drives by, blissfully un-aware, in his three wheeled car, to deliver the clerical error cheque.

  • http://undefined accozzaglia

    Yay. Blue and calming like the water (take your pick: the lake water or jet lav toilet water). :)

  • Christopher Drost

    brilliant!

  • http://undefined JMcCormick

    Perhaps this is a Christo installation a la NYC Central Park
    http://farm1.static.flickr.com/46/172070489_1b5cffe1ce.jpg

  • http://undefined JMcCormick

    Also, God forbid that people have to actually see the amount of FILTH and trash they consume and produce.
    I think people’s reactions to all of this trash and garbage piling up in our parks is an interesting situation. “Get this waste out of my park where my children play” even though we are the ones producing it all. “Ship it away from my consciousness so that I don’t have to think about it, and therefore continue to consume without thinking of the consequences!”

  • http://undefined spacejack

    A city of millions of people is going to generate trash, duh.

  • http://undefined Robis

    Of course they will. But *how much* they generate is the point.
    I’ve been ashamed at how short-sighted so many people have been. When there’s no one to pick up the garbage, the prudent thing would be to try and cut back on the amount of trash one is making. I don’t think that is happening. Even worse, there hasn’t been much effort from the government or the media to make this bit of wisdom part of the dialogue about the strike.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    “When there’s no one to pick up the garbage, the prudent thing would be to try and cut back on the amount of trash one is making. I don’t think that is happening.”
    Really? Care to explain how you’re measuring this?

  • http://undefined rek

    Maybe they’ll put all the garbage from the Indy there too.

  • http://undefined Robis

    How I’m measuring what? Whether folks are cutting back on their garbage production? I think the large piles of garbage pretty much speak for themselves. Or are you suggesting that what we’re seeing *is* cutting back? If that’s the case, Toronto is a city of pigs.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    So you think that after 3 weeks of no garbage collection, there would be no visible waste from a population of millions?
    Maybe if we privatized garbage collection, and everyone paid the real costs of removing their personal waste, people would pay more attention to what they throw away.

  • http://undefined rek

    Isn’t that what the bag sticker program is for? You pay by volume, more or less.

  • http://undefined Robis

    Where did I say that after 3 weeks of garbage collection there would be no visible waste? What I was pointing out is that there would be *so much* of it.
    But let me ask you directly: in a city where folks couldn’t even go one day without dumping bags of garbage on the street, do you really think cutting back on trash production was a widespread reaction to the strike?

  • http://undefined spacejack

    Hey now, you’re the one making wild assertions, the burden of proof is on you. What data did you collect to make this claim – the photos Torontoist posts every day where they seek out the ugliest trash bins and dumping sites? I walk 5km through the city on my home every day, and to be honest it doesn’t look all that bad from what I’ve seen. The city mostly just looks a bit shabby – kinda like the 1970s.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    By the way, if you actually wanted to research any of this data – how much trash is generated, how we compare to other cities, what sorts of solutions are being explored, etc. – maybe you could call a waste management expert at the city… oops.

  • http://undefined Eryngo

    Cheryl, there is a protest at Moss Park this Monday, July 13 at 5pm. Hope to see you there.