Yellowknife, N.W.T. - Yellowknifers have been out this week cleaning up the city's streets for Spring Clean Up Week.

A volunteer with the group Yellowknife Trash Pick-up Artists, Adrian Bell, said this year the city seems cleaner and they are planning fewer trash pick-up sessions.

"If you spend enough time picking up garbage over the course of five or six years it could be that you get up a lot of the stuff that's been there for a few years and you start getting ahead of the game a little bit. So it's hard to tell if people are littering less or if people are just picking up more litter."

Bell explained why having clean streets is important to him.

"For me it's quality of life, and then to think that you might have relatives up to visit and there might be tourists coming to town, and they're going to have to endure this dust and litter blowing around, you know it really seems like something that we shouldn't let happen."

In addition to public initiatives the city also divides $30,000 annually among community groups to clean up trash.

At least 20 volunteers from each group come out and clean a section of the city in exchange for the civic funding.

This year 29 groups are taking part. 

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