Post photo: Garbage can in the Wertwiesenpark | @ Thomas Aurich
Dieter Ludwig (†) was considered the founder of the largest light rail network in the EU. If a station was defaced to open a new line, it was relocated. His image of public transport, cleanliness signals safety and order. What does that have to do with the garbage in Heilbronn?
A cleaner city demonstrates the home of orderly citizens. Often, however, it is not the will of those who stand in the way, but the costs. Let's look at the yellow bags. A little more wind and they sail through the streets, tear open and the flood of packaging is distributed in our streets. The operations office quickly arranges for the evacuation. But how much does it all cost? I don't think we all need to be mathematicians to realize that sturdier bags would probably be the cheaper route.
The garbage issue is currently also drawing attention to the wonderful time that the barbecue season is about to begin. And everyone in our parks can understand this on warm weekends by perceiving the remains. The rubbish bins there reveal two things: on the one hand, that park visitors are quite willing to dispose of rubbish properly, almost everything, including dog bags, is brought to the drop-off points. However, the containers are overwhelmed due to the lack of size. On the other hand, the constantly growing crow population was not taken into account. We heard from an expert that crows have become so intelligent when it comes to foraging that one drops into the bin to collect it while the other stands guard. Everything is then distributed up to five meters around the container for sorting in order to enjoy usable leftovers. The leftovers then let the pigeons get their money's worth. And how, for example, the parasols look like due to the increasing number of pigeons with pigeon droppings, you can see where there are trees in the city area. The operations office then cleans around the garbage collectors early in the morning afterwards.
Consequence for the taxpayer, we often pay for cleaning on a daily basis. A known problem for more than 15 years now, nothing has changed. One office buys the garbage cans, the other one disposes of them, i.e. when buying the garbage cans you don't have to make sure that the disposal costs are reasonable.
Therefore, more stable yellow sacks, underfloor containers in the area of large amounts of waste and swing-top containers in the area of food packaging disposal should help!
"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."
Theodore Roosevelt, Seventh Annual Message (December 3, 1907)
