Interesting post from Australia
EVERY day in our city we plant a new tree. Not because it is replacing a dead or dying tree or because we are doing extra plantings.
- But because vandals destroy one tree every day in the city. Snapped off, limbs stripped or just plain uprooted. A tree a day every day of the year. It is irritating. And it costs $66,000 a year.
But that is just the beginning.
- Street cleaning is expensive. The annual cost of cleaning the City of Melbourne is $11 million. We deodorise, sweep roads and footpaths, high-pressure-clean hard surfaces and clean street furniture.
- This cost is rising by about $1 million a year.
Last October we introduced two new mobile graffiti vans, which will bring the council’s annual expenditure on graffiti removal from about $700,000 a year to more than $1 million.
It all adds up to an enormous cost to the city, ratepayers, businesses and our community. Imagine what else we could do with these millions of dollars. Instead, we are cleaning up after the mindless….
We estimate that it costs just under $5 million a year cleaning up after these vandals. I do not think we are going to fix this problem through education programs….
Full Story at Herald Sun