Spring clean sweep coming to Iqaluit

Here’s a look at the trash collecting in an Iqaluit brook. (PHOTO BY BETH BROWN)

Last year these students and teachers picked up cigarette butts for most of their morning. (PHOTO BY BETH BROWN)

Grab your gloves and sunscreen Iqaluit, it’s time for community cleanup.

This Friday, June 22 from 9 a.m. until noon, city residents are invited out to tidy up all that trash that showed up in Iqaluit ditches and streams this spring after the snow melted.

You can pick up garbage bags, gloves and other supplies at the Unikkaarvik Visitors Centre from 8:30 a.m. onwards, or, from the same place during business hours on Wednesday or Thursday this week.

After the clean sweep, there will be a free appreciation barbecue for volunteers. At that event, there will be a draw to find out which volunteers will win this year’s grand prize, a set of First Air plane tickets. There will be other prizes drawn as well, donated by local businesses.

If you want to register a large group, or scope out a specific spot to clean, you can contact Jamesse Molton from Nunavut’s Department of Environment at 975-7745, or by email at JMolton@gov.nu.ca.

In other garbage news, the City of Iqaluit is holding a large item pickup starting next week, June 25 to June 29.

For free, you can get rid of up to two appliances and three large household items that weigh 50 pounds or more, or that are too large to put in a garbage bag.

Because city workers will pick up same type items each day throughout the week, residents are asked to put their items out on Sunday evening, June 24, next to where their regular garbage is picked up.

That could mean workers will pick up your old fridge or stove on one day, and come for small furniture and broken bicycles another day.

“Items should be sorted into separate piles, one pile each for furniture, and appliances,” the city said in a public service announcement. “Items should not be stacked, and should also not be mixed with regular waste. All items collected will be disposed of in the landfill.”

If you don’t want your stuff thrown out by mistake, don’t leave it near your trash heap, the city warned.

Commercial zones—meaning the downtown core, West 40 area and Federal Road—are not included in the large item pickup.

Are you wondering what you can’t put on the curb? Here’s a no-go list for the free pickup:

• mixed waste piles
• building debris, wood from construction, pallets, crates etc.
• electronics
• household hazardous waste
• automobile parts
• tires
• metal
• propane tanks
• soil and rocks
• pet waste

You’ll have to take this stuff to the dump yourself.

Cardboard is also off the list, and the city sent out a reminder to residents to say that corrugated cardboard (from all your online shopping) should be broken down and set out separately with your regular residential garbage.