Last November, the Public Services area issued a dozen sanctions for failing to comply with the municipal cleaning ordinance; among them, the one imposed on a resident of Santa Cruz who deposited their waste bags outside the new containers buried located on San Francisco street corner Villalba Hervás street, and it did so despite the fact that the containers were empty.
The penalty imposed on this neighbor was 150 euros. If the new ordinance were already in force, which is currently being processed for final approval next January, the fine would have reached 2,001 euros, and could reach up to 100,000. In addition, this infraction now considered as minor, would become serious.
This hardening of both the category of the offence, as well as the amount, is one of the main novelties that the new cleaning ordinance will introduce, with which it is intended to toughen the punishment of uncivil neighbors. Other infractions, such as urinating on public roads, remain minor, with fines ranging from 90 to 750 euros, while the deterioration of street furniture, such as litter bins, goes from being a minor infraction to a very serious one, with fines. of up to 3,000 euros.
The councilor of Public Services, Carlos Tarifeexplained that “the waste ordinance had to be updated because there is a new law, the Circular Economy law, which came into force in April and which tries to get the different cities to clearly commit to recycling and separating waste, as well as to the implantation of the organic container”.
Tarife added that “in terms of waste, we do not like having to penalize because that means that there are citizens who do not have what they touch.” “Today -he continues- we continue to have seven or eight points in the city where there are neighbors who put their waste outside the container, or anywhere, just because. As of mid-January, the minimum fine for this offense will no longer be 90 euros, but 2,000”.
In addition, he defended that “it was time to update the ordinance, raise awareness and, of course, what I would love is that no sanction had to be applied, but as of the entry into force of the new ordinance, the anticivilians have to know that If they deposit the rubbish outside the container, if it is empty and any Public Services inspector or the Local Police confirms it, they will be severely penalized”.
The councilor already advanced last November that with the entry into force of the new waste ordinance a special operation of the Local Police will be activated in order to prosecute the practice of some residents of leaving their garbage bags outside the containers, while these are empty. The points where this practice has been detected are located in neighborhoods such as Azorín or Los Gladiolos.
