Clean, Green & Safe

Across the district, at the boundaries of every community, signs are placed telling residents and visitors alike that they are passing through a Safe Community. The designation came first from Safe Communities Canada, then the World Health Organization and has been renewed regularly.
The signs say a lot about our selves. We value the care we provide to people of all ages, cultures, and abilities. The district has developed educational programs to reduce crime and violence among young people. It has supported drug programs for people who have become dependant on both prescriptive drugs and illegal drugs.
Through the efforts of the Rainy River Valley Safety Coalition, many programs are now in place to assist older residents.
As a district we can be very proud of our designation as a Safe Community.
We also like to promote our area as “Clean, Green and Safe”
Our lakes and rivers provide clean safe water to play and enjoy. Our fields and forests are lush green and the views are breath taking.
But, I sometimes wonder if we use the term “Green” too loosely. The Town of Fort Frances offered the municipalities and the first nations of the area the opportunity to have their blue box materials brought to Fort Frances and then forwarded on to a depot in Winnipeg. The costs would be the same as Fort Frances currently pays. Most have not had a blue box program.
Only Emo and Rainy River took the Town of Fort Frances up on the offer. Stewardship Ontario is encouraging municipalities to group together for collecting paper, packaging, plastics and other items. The goal for the province is eventually to reach 80% recycle levels.
It appears that the smaller communities of the district are not as interested in looking after the environment and making their communities “Green”. In every school across the area, children learn from the earliest age that it is important to recycle. It is practiced in the schools. Yet, when they return home the value of recycling and looking after the environment seems to be forgotten by their parents, their municipal and band councilors.
The arguments for not recycling may be that the cost of recycling is too high. But are those governments ransoming the cleanup of their landfills to future generations? It has been calculated that every Ontario resident is now putting over 1,000 pounds of material into the landfills of the province each year.
And in the district can we truly market ourselves as green, when the greatest proportion of governments choose not to be part of the “Blue Box” program of Ontario?

- Jim Cumming
Publisher