World Cleanup Day 2023

World Cleanup Day is fast approaching on the 16th September organised by The World Cleanup Organisation. I know this is a popular event for companies and schools to get involved locally and start cleaning up some part of where you live that might be polluted by rubbish.

I was checking the website and there are many events already listed that people can register and take part in. But you can also create your own event and add it to the list.

Generally there seems to be more rubbish rolling around my own town in the recent times and I have a few ideas why that is. I live near to McDonalds and I notice many travelers and possibly locals who go through the drive through, seem to then just throw their rubbish out of the window when they are finished. I am not sure what would make someone do that, but they do. I do think that McDonalds do not provide enough bins for the rubbish that they create for people to use, but I don't think this is still an excuse for this anti-social behaviour.

Another reason is that in our town, they decided to try and be more green and reduce waste. They did this by removing the number of bins people can throw their rubbish. The result is that more of it lands on the street as people have nowhere to dispose of their rubbish. I don't know why people would still throw it on the floor though.

The other reason for dirtier streets seems to be that Germany has implemented a Yellow Sack recylcing system which we are forced to use. These thin and flimsy bags are the only way people can recycle much of their rubbish and therefore there are now on rubbish day, huge numbers of these bags around the town as use of bins is prohibited.

Of course, sometimes they do not get collected for a while or there is a delay so they get blown around or torn open as they are super flimsy and cheap and therefore rubbish is blown about everywhere as though you had just been to a concert. You cannot put the sacks in a bin where they can stay together as then they would not be collected. The result is towns with lots of rubbish flying around everywhere especially with bad weather.

This means instead of a neat and orderly recycling system, we create more plastic to recycle and makes the town look ghastly with huge piles of rubbish bags littering the town. It is possibly one of the most brainless systems I have ever come across and 1 step forward and 2 steps backwards.

Workers employed by the town to clean the streets then cannot keep up with this extra rubbish being created by the bad recycling system and people's carelessness, therefore we need to have days like World Cleanup Day to tidy up the town.

After my wonderful stop at Chiemsee, I was shocked by the sight that awaited me at another rest stop in Bayern last week. You may think, oh they didn't have enough bins or something but there were many of these huge bins for people to put their waste around but people seemed to have just dumped their rubbish like this.

Just 10 metres away was another bin where people could easily put their rubbish in, but did not want to take the extra steps to do it. Whilst I was there photographing this scene, I witness someone actually do that. Instead of putting their rubbish in an empty bin, just put it next to the overflowing one where the rubbish was blowing all over the place.

The scene was like there had been no rubbish collections for weeks, but it was just that people didnt want to walk an extra 10 metres to use an empty bin.

Some people were leaving their coffee cups to be collected by the cleaning fairy who magically cleans up after them.

All this rubbish was within 10 metres of a bin with plenty of space for the rubbish. After encountering sights like this, I hope that more people will try to dispose of their rubbish and we can keep the environment clean. Taking part in World Cleanup Day could be a good opportunity.

Credits:

All photos are my own.

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