Once again, East Boston’s streets and sidewalks all need a good sweeping as the long winter has caused trash to be strewn everywhere.
The snow has melted; the trash locked in the ice and under the snow for so many months has appeared in full blossom.
It is ugly. It is frustrating to look at. It is difficult to live with.
Many of us judge our neighborhoods by how clean they are.
The effort here, year round, is to do as much as possible in the knowledge that no matter what is done, the effort to keep the place clean must be ongoing.
Once again looking into the matter, we come away thinking that what is most needed besides enforcement is understanding by many, many residents that trash must be disposed of in barrels and bags and not simply thrown into the streets or onto the sidewalks.
Implicit in this type of thinking is the fact that after trash is removed or taken away on trash day, the sidewalks must be swept in front of every home and the trash that has fallen into the street must be removed.
That’s the way it used to be when East Boston was a far different place than it is today.
There was a different kind of camaraderie shared among the people of this place then.
The East Boston of today generates an enormous amount of gutter trash and sidewalk trash.
Of course, the society is vastly different today, with all kinds of fast foods and candies, wrapped in plastic or placed in throwaway bags, finding their way onto the sidewalks and streets instead of being placed in trash containers.
In order to turn the situation around the city needs to educate the residents of this neighborhood who constantly trash the place that trash has its place and that place isn’t in the street or on our sidewalks.
Educating those who fail to understand this will require more than sending crews around with brooms sweeping away all the gutter and sidewalk trash.
And it will be cheaper.
In the meantime, we ready ourselves for spring and the annual superhuman effort at a cleanup in the knowledge that our work here cleaning the streets and sidewalks is never done.