Paying a 10¢ finder's fee for every discarded syringe picked up in Vancouver's east side would encourage street people to collect and return them, says a community policing leader.

Eileen Mosca, president of Grandview-Woodland Community Police Centre, said she's proposing a new way to clean up discarded needles on the streets in the city's east side, which has seen rising numbers of syringes over the past 10 years.

A survey of 720 people who live near the Grandview area around Commercial Drive suggests that more than 70 per cent have seen a discarded needle in the past six months, Mosca said.

"It wouldn't be open to everybody," Mosca told CBC News on Monday morning. "But [the people] who might enrol in the program of collecting needles — they'd get training, a sharps container, tongs and gloves, and be able to collect the needles they see."

The survey, conducted last summer and released Monday, should be an indication that it's time the provincial government commits to fighting this "serious problem" and improving the quality of life of the residents in the neighbhourhood, she said.

The Ministry of Health should provide funding and should begin a pilot project in the Commercial Drive area, she said.

The policing organization will be meeting a number of health agencies in the next three week to sort out concrete ideas about its plan.

Free syringes are provided to injection drug users throughout the Vancouver area as part of the program to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases that can be spread through shared used of needles.