The Grande Prairie Northreach Society is encouraging residents to give them a call if they find any “substance-using” supplies in the community for cleanup.
According to Northreach’s Harm Reduction Team Lead Lindsay Loset, substance-using materials can take a variety of forms including syringes, spoons, foil packets, tourniquets, or inhalation devices like bubble pipes.
“It can be hard to distinguish [foil] sometimes because in the community there’s also foil burger wrappers and other stuff, but we can usually tell if somebody has used it to smoke substances off of,” she says.
Loset maintains that the initiative is a critical part of the work Northreach does as they supply those with substance use disorder with a means to use drugs safely.
“It’s just for community safety, and just because we distribute the supplies, we want to make sure that they are disposed of properly too,” she says.
In addition to cleanup services, Northreach also provides education and tools for individuals and businesses to clean up their property; however, Loset maintains that cleaning up substance-use materials is never an expectation.
“It’s totally up to people’s comfort, we offer safer needle pickup training, and we can provide our disposal bins to individuals or businesses so if they are comfortable with picking them up, we will provide the supplies and the training to do it properly,” she says. “If people don’t feel comfortable with it, we don’t expect them to pick them up, and we would never want an uncapped needle or something like that on a playground or something.”
The Team Lead adds that high-traffic areas have been identified throughout the city, and insists that her team “tries their best” to ensure those areas are a top priority when it comes to cleanup services.
“We do have hotspots within the community that we try our best to sweep regularly, so sometimes people call to let us know there is debris in an area that we know about, but we can’t always keep tabs on everything, but we try our best, and that’s something for the community to know about, that we are actively always trying to get ahead of any debris in the community,” she says.
Anyone in need of a cleanup on their property, or who has noticed another area in need can notify the Northreach Society at (780)-538-3388.
