Community would rather clean cans

TIGNISH — The community council in Tignish wants the government to lift the provincial ban on canned pop. It hopes that will put end to cleaning up broken glass in public places.

It's against the law to sell carbonated beverages in cans in P.E.I. The government maintains it's an environmental issue, and people are less likely to litter if the bottles are returnable.

However, that's not the case in the western P.E.I. community. People are smashing bottles all over the place.

"We've been experiencing a number of situations where we have broken bottles, especially in our recreation parks where we have the beach volleyball court and we find a lot of broken glass in the sand," said community council chair Elmer Arsenault. "We have to clean that out before it hurts some of the kids that are playing there. Also the slides, and the gazebo that we have there ? in the washroom. We find broken bottles every so often on our roads, our streets, our sidewalks."

The council reasons cans are much easier to clean up. Arsenault said a letter has been sent to Environment Minister Jamie Ballem making the case for canned pop.