For 10 years, Harvey Gill couldn’t put his finger on who was dumping their household garbage bags outside of his house.
Language barriers and a frequent rotation of landlords or tenants rendered it nigh impossible for Gill to communicate with the culprit neighbours of his detached home on Cooper Road, near Garden City and Francis roads.
All the while, the dumpers were leaving their trash in front of his property, often on non-collection days, which led to crows ripping into the bags and forcing Gill to clean it all up.
But it wasn’t until he spotted new neighbours on CCTV footage dumping their garbage outside his home — and then finding evidence in the trash — that he was able to confront them.
“I think they didn’t know what to do with their garbage and it’s been happening for all of the 10 years before them,” said Gill.
“I have tried to communicate with the landlords every time, but, even when I do track them down, there is a language barrier.
“This time, however, I found airline tickets with their address on it in their garbage at the front of my house; so this time I had evidence, as well as the camera footage.”
Even after confronting the family, which Gill believes to be of Chinese ethnicity, language problems were again a problem.
He quickly went back to his house and grabbed the City of Richmond’s multi-lingual garbage collection brochure. “I gave it to them and they seemed to understand.”
It wasn’t until last week, however, that Gill knew for sure that the message had been understood.
“I noticed the other day, they have their cans (from the city) and they were out on collection day,” said a happy Gill.
Anyone wishing to share the multi-lingual garbage collection process with their neighbours, should go online to the city's website (click here).
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