2010

Cūkmens starts a campaign “Don’t Litter the Roadside!”

To fight against littering of the roadside and warn the drivers from being penalised for throwing waste out of the car windows (amount of fine, LVL from 50 to 500), Cūkmens, assisted by a group of supporters “Clean Forests”, launches a campaign “Don’t litter the roadside!“. Special road information signs warning the drivers and encouraging them to closer watch their own conduct in a few coming days will be posted on roadsides around the perimeter of Riga.

Within the coming moth, the same signs will be posted also around the larger regional towns. Within the campaign “Don’t litter the roadside!” Cūkmens and his group will go on a regional tour, visiting several towns. He has envisaged meetings with the heads of the local governments, discussions about waste management, informal talks with local people and setting up of the new information road signs.

The statistics summed up by the services in charge, indicates that annually about 16 000 m³ are collected and removed from forests and roadsides of Latvia, incurring expense higher than LVL 500 000 paid by the state. Such a massive amount of waste is comparable to more than 320 fully loaded log haulers or about 16 000 garbage bins full to the brim.

„Due to Cūkmen’s activities, people litter the forest less than before however throwing waste out of the car windows and disposing of the domestic waste by taking it to roadside is still a huge problem. To find solution and change people’s thinking Cukmens had no other remedy than to fall back on certain paragraphs of laws and set out to penalise the offenders, “ Tomass Kotovičš, head of communication division, a/s Latvijas valsts meži (LVM) explains.

People are tired of finding themselves in soiled places each time they seek recreation outdoors. This is demonstrated not only by numerous complaint calls to the State Environment Agency but also the high responsiveness and activity of people during cleanup days and other environment cleanup measures.