The Figueres City Council has launched a new campaign against incivility focused on waste dumping with fines that can range from 80 for urinating in public to 2,000 euros depending on the seriousness of the infraction.
The initiative will involve the participation of plainclothes Urban Police officers and environmental inspectors, who will investigate the origin of the garbage bags thrown out of the containers.
For ten days, an information campaign will be carried out and from then on sanctions will begin. “It is a scourge that affects our city. We have to put a stop to it because it disrupts normal coexistence and leads to an increase in the bill for the people of Figueres. We all end up paying for the incivility,” says the mayor, Jordi Masquef.
Figueres wants to combat incivility from different fronts. In January he launched a campaign against electric scooters that circulate on the sidewalk, against direction or at excess speed. 500 information leaflets were distributed and sanctions began to be imposed. In just three weeks, 120 fines of between 80 and 1,000 euros were issued.
This February, a new campaign was added, this one against dog excrement and urine on the street. Failure to comply with the ordinance that regulates penalties can range from 751 to 1,500 euros.
Now, the City Council is launching a law against dumping waste outside of containers, throwing bags of waste into bins, not disposing of waste in the appropriate container, spreading garbage, urinating, spitting, pouring debris and junk or leaving cans in the street are some of the assumptions on which the council wants to focus its efforts.
To do this, it will involve several departments, from Urban Services to the Urban Police. For this reason, it will have plainclothes agents and environmental inspectors who will try to catch offenders ‘red-handed’. In the case of garbage, they may also open the bags to try to identify their authorship.
The information campaign will last 10 days – starting tomorrow – and then fines will begin. Penalties can range from 80 euros for urinating in public to 150 in case of repeat offenses and 2,000 in more flagrant cases.
Both Masquef and the Councilor for Urban Services, Carme Martínez, insist that this is a problem that has been affecting the city for a long time and that the street cleaning service costs about 3.8 million euros annually.
Despite quantifying how much of this expense can be attributed to incivility, Masquef says that “it makes everyone’s bill more expensive” and that action must be taken. “We have to put a stop to it,” insists the mayor.
