Garbage in your park? Rome decides if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

'La Bellezza sulla Monnezza'
Beauty wins over the Garbage Beast
photo from RomaToday

In an audacious move by Roma Capitale - or the Rome Municipality, the City decided to seriously 'think out of the box' and take on a new approach to garbage collection. By removing all the garbage cans* from one of its rather large parks. This experiment was launched on May 1st, and for the most part, was deemed somewhat successful. While more people brought their garbage out of the park nearer the large containers, they did see a larger accumulation around the canisters still left standing.
"The fact that people actually bothered to bring the garbage to one place rather than just leave it where they were picnicking for us is a huge success," remarked the AMA Garbage guys.  We hope that it catches on and more and more people who enjoy the park, actually take out what they put in.
Two months on, however, residents are reporting more and more garbage going uncollected than ever before. To the point that one of the rivers feeding into the Tiber has its very own garbage dam - made entirely of plastic bottles and reeds. 
"If nothing else, we've lightened the load on our work hours and workers. I mean, driving around the park every once in awhile and pretending we were doing it on a weekly basis was really maddening for all concerned. Now we just don't do it. This is one for transparent government."

*True story - only the quotes are made up (as usual)