Guelph man hits 'roadblock' in bid to clean up roadside trash along 2-km stretch of Highway 401

Wayne Fernandes is frustrated he's hit a "roadblock" with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) in trying to get approval to clean up land along a section of Highway 401 near Guelph.

While vacationing in Australia in the spring of 2023, Fernandes said, he noticed how pristine and litter free it was. He said he got "depressed" after returning to Canada and seeing the build-up of litter along the 401 while driving home to Guelph from the Toronto area's Pearson International Airport. 

Fernandes said he wanted to get a better understanding of the scope of the problem, so he used a drone to get an overhead view.

"It's actually much worse than you think it is because you don't really see it from the side of the road when you're in the car," Fernandes told CBC News.

"There was so much garbage on the 401, including bottles of urine thrown from truck windows."

After sharing the drone footage online, Fernades said he was contacted by Quebec-based non-profit PurNat, which "lined up a corporate sponsor to do a sponsored event to clean up maybe a kilometre or two" of the side of the highway.

"But we needed the OPP [Ontario Provincial Police] to give us some police protection because you can't just park on the side of the 401 and clean up," Fernandes explained.

Founded in 2013, PurNat says it works to protect the environment by setting up and operating cleanup services.

Fernandes said he has sent requests to the MTO's Adopt-a-Highway program for a permission letter that he could also share with the OPP, but he has not received a response.

"Nobody at the MTO is really helping us in terms of giving us a letter to give to the OPP to give us coverage," he said.

"An email that we sent [at the] end of summer last year to the MTO got a response in January of this year. So, it took about six months for them to respond," he said, noting MTO responded with a request for more information.

Fernandes said while "the garbage issue is getting worse," the MTO appears to be dragging its feet.

"We had 50 people willing to clean this place up, the worst spots of it … but nobody's getting back to us to give us police protection," he said.

"We can clean up any small area, but when it comes to the 401, it needs the OPP to be there, and that's where we had a roadblock and we can't do anything."