Bins would reduce littering, and even other crimes

Dear Editor,
Yet again, I find myself writing in complete agreement with one of your editorials; this time, that of Sunday Feb 12, 2023 entitled “Sprucing up Guyana”. You sing our songs and strum our collective pain with your fingers.
Generally speaking, I think all Guyanese long for Guyana to be a beautiful, clean, orderly place in which we can live (again). And we agree, I am sure, that each citizen has a role to play in making this a reality.
I agree that “We have imbibed an awful, anti-democratic habit that causes us to look to Government – at whatever levels – to solve problems that we can handle on our own.” Indeed, as John F Kennedy once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”. We all have a responsibility to make Guyana clean and beautiful.
On the other hand, citizens of a country pay taxes, so that the state organs at whatever levels can help them help themselves. The state as trustee holds the funds we earn from natural resources and other sources. But how can money help with the litter problem we face, and what is my point? Bear with me.
As you said, historically, the rot “began during the collapse of the economy…and gradually, a beaten and broken people perhaps began accepting that they were not deserving of beauty and cleanliness.” This is undoubtedly true. Poverty brings depression, and we have faced tremendous poverty in the past.
Note, though, that just as the absence of funds can break a people, its presence can build them (again). Therefore, the best way for all of us to again feel worthy of beauty and cleanliness is for us to have access to beauty and cleanliness right here in our home. If Guyanese can enjoy more of this, we can then yearn more for more of it, and ultimately start to play a part in ensuring we keep the place beautiful and clean. We need to be inspired.
You rightly asked, “Who has not visited some foreign country and taken inordinate trouble to dump their candy wrappers into garbage cans…?” I agree. Because, when we visit foreign countries more developed than ours (and even some less developed ones), we indeed become inspired to be clean by the cleanliness itself – but also by the profuse presence of easily accessible, durable, reliable, properly maintained and undeniably attractive garbage cans and bins.
Can a poor artist with a great artistic idea be considered to be “inspired” if he has no canvas on which to give birth to his vision? The absence of that canvas would break his spirit. A man deciding whether or not to litter would more than likely NOT litter if there is nearby a bin he can rely on. A Guyanese man, on the other hand, would likely still litter because he has not been exposed to cleanliness enough to increase his desire for it; no great artistic idea.
If we are to be inspired to make and keep Guyana clean, we need the combination of both; on the one hand, exposure to cleanliness, and on the other, bins. One alone without the other is nothing; and, collectively, we have neither.
With regard to bins, I am suggesting that, with our increased resources, we now ensure that someone who has a piece of litter or two to throw away also now has access to a nearby bin that is emptied daily, or as often as needed, so that there is no overflow to discourage that someone from using it. This would mean installing and maintaining bins strategically placed in profusion across our nation. This can be done by the state. It can also be done by the Private Sector (with permission from, and regulation by, the state) aiming to use the bins as places for advertisements for their businesses. If the state chooses to do it, businesses can be charged a fee for having their advertisements placed on the bins. Bins can be a direct source of revenue for the state.
With regard to cleanliness, I am also suggesting that we hire a very large number of people (perhaps on a part-time basis) to pick up litter from the streets daily, and empty bins across the busiest and dirtiest parts of our home as often as it takes to allow Guyanese to see the beauty that can be found in cleanliness. Cleanliness will encourage more cleanliness. Those same cleaners would grow to resent litterbugs, and their families and friends would start using the new bins in an effort to respect the work of those cleaners.
While it is not impossible to be clean without the presence of properly maintained bins, it sure is difficult. A bin culture requires bins in abundance. And here, in Guyana, we practically have none. Moreover, once the country moves towards more cleanliness and beauty, there is the very high likelihood, based on the broken windows theory, that there would be a noticeable, if not significant, decrease in the crime rate.
The “broken windows” theory is an academic theory proposed by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982. It states that signs of disorder in a neighbourhood, like a broken window or garbage, encourage petty crimes and lead to more serious crimes. Who can disagree that Georgetown and other parts of Guyana have, in recent decades, appeared more and more like the fictional Gotham City, with cronies and criminals wreaking havoc everywhere in our lives?
Further developing the theory in their book “Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities”, criminologists George L. Kelling and Catharine Coles wrote that a successful strategy for preventing crime is to address the problems when they are small – repair the broken windows within a short time; say a day or a week, and the tendency is that vandals are much less likely to break the other windows or do further damage. Clean up the streets every day, and the tendency is for litter not to accumulate and for the rate of littering to be much less. People would have more respect for the state and the state’s authorities.
The theory has been successfully used in major cities to reduce crime, because sometimes the simplest solutions, like bins, cleaners and cleanliness, are the best.

Sincerely,
John M. Fraser, LL.B.