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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - As people throughout Yellowknife join in on this week's spring clean up, one thing continues to come up - coffee cups.

The amount of waste seen in the ditches is largely attributed to disposable beverage containers, and it brings in to question what the city and businesses are doing to help reduce the amount of waste.

Coffee cups can be seen littering the streets of Yellowknife, including here at the intersection of Old Airport Road and Kam Lake Road on Sunday afternoon. Katherine Roth/NNSL photo

Tim Hortons co-owner Greg Barton said while although many cups from his store don't make their way into garbage bins, he does what he can with his employees to help get rid of the mess each spring. His franchise was recently named the top selling Tim Hortons in North America for the second straight year.

"We have a clean-up every year," he said. "We will be doing a big clean-up here in the next week or so, and we are recruiting from local schools to get students to come out and help."

To encourage students to participate, Barton will be offering the "Earn-a-bike program," offered through Tim Hortons, where students are rewarded with a bicycle and a helmet after putting in 25 hours of time picking up litter. He added the store also promotes environmental awareness by giving away 1,000 travel mugs per year, and encourages people to use them by offering a 10 cent discount on coffee.

"We have been on the clean-up committee for several years, and have been a big player in city cleanups," Barton said. "We have been working hard to do our part and we certainly feel like we are contributing."

To help keep the city clean and keep the cups and litter off the street, Barton said he will be providing garbage cans that will be placed around the city later in the year.

"We encourage everyone to put litter in its place. It's an important component to keeping our environment and our city clean." During the city's "Spring Cleanup Week" which started this Monday, over 1,000 bags of trash are expected to be removed from the streets, but director of Community Services Grant White said the city doesn't analyze the contents of the bags.

"It is possible that coffee cups make up a large portion of the trash, but our main concern is just getting all of the garbage picked up," he said.

However, in recognition of all types of beverage containers being thrown on the streets, litter and recycle-combined receptacles have been placed downtown on a trial basis to see whether people make the effort to put them to use.

"Right now, the biggest thing we can do is public education," said White.

"It's the most preventative thing we can do, with groups helping to raise public intolerance to litter. We are providing lots of opportunities to do things other than throw (garbage) on the ground."

He added that once spring clean-up is complete and plans to increase the number of garbage bins around the city have taken place, Yellowknife will be in a much cleaner state.

"We always get lots of comments about the amount of litter as the snow melts and it becomes visible, but as soon as the spring clean-up is complete, the look of the city completely changes," White said. "It's like night and day."