Dozens of gas stations throughout the province have joined in efforts to reduce roadside litter by making car litter bags available to customers.
Members of the Prince Edward Island Retail Gasoline Dealers Association are distributing the litter bags to customers and providing a place for them to empty filled bags.
Minister of Environment and Energy Jamie Ballem joined the association’s executive director Dale Mader, and president Wayne Vloet, at City Shell in Charlottetown recently to launch the car litter bag campaign.
“The majority of roadside litter starts with the drivers or passengers who toss trash out the window, so gas stations are the perfect place to spread the litter prevention message,” said Minister Ballem. “I want to thank the members of the PEI Retail Gasoline Dealers Association for their efforts in encouraging people to keep our roadsides clean by making the car litter bags readily available and allowing people to empty the bags at their stations.”
About 75,000 litter bags have been distributed to the approximately 100 service stations across PEI which are members of the PEI Retail Gasoline Dealers Association. Dale Mader said association members were pleased to get the litter bags.
“Many of the dealers participated in similar campaigns years ago and they’ve told us that they still have customers looking for car litter bags,” said Mr. Mader.
“Hopefully by making it easy and convenient for people to handle garbage that accumulates in their cars, we can prevent a lot of it from ending up on roadsides,” Mr. Vloet added.
In other efforts to support the provincial litter awareness campaign, members of the Retail Gasoline Dealers Association are displaying signage with the campaign slogan, Keep the Island Clean. Put Litter in its Place. As well, the association is carrying the anti-litter message in its magazine, Auto Atlantic.
The provincial litter awareness campaign is a joint initiative of provincial government departments and agencies, municipal representatives, industry sectors including tourism and construction, and community and environmental groups. In addition to the car litter bags, a variety of materials are available on litter prevention including fact sheets, pledge cards, posters, signs and bookmarks. Members of the provincial committee are also available to speak at meetings. For further information, or to report an incident of littering, call the litter hotline at 1-866-368-5024.