The Clean Up Team

Spraying the streets down

As you can imagine, a city like this can get very dirty. With the amount of people that live here and the number of visitors passing through, this place can generate enough waste to fill the landfill sites of a small country, in a day. I often notice clean up teams hard at work in the city. A good sight! When you consider how much waste is being generated, there needs to be constant cleaning and removing of rubbish. The trucks which remove the rubbish empty the dumpsters several times each day. There are many dumpsters all over the place as people have to bring their own rubbish down from their apartments and then sort it into the appropriate dumpsters. The pavements are my pet hate. I find I have to keep my eyes fixed on the ground when I am walking on the pavements - in order to avoid standing in dog poo, spit or vomit. It is most annoying. You cannot lift your eyes off the pavement otherwise you may just land in something not so delightful.... The number of people who have dogs here is unbelievable. The dogs live in flats or apartment buildings and the owners bring the dogs down to the street or the park a couple of times each day. I have even seen big dogs like Dobermans and Rottweillers in the parks! Some dog owners take responsibility for their dogs and pick up the poo, whilst many seem not to do so. This really has to be the worst place I have been in terms of dirty pavements. Parisian pavements have nothing on this place. It is mainly small little French poodles which poo on the pavements there. Paris is sparkling clean by comparison. That said, there are teams which clean the pavements continuously. There are sweepers with brooms and there are guys who spray the pavements down with power hose pipes. And there are trucks with rotating brushes on the front and back of the truck, for scaling and polishing the roads. Certainly necessary - considering how dirty the place can become. On Summer nights or during fiestas the bins in the streets usually overflow with bottles, cans and other litter. It can be a problem as the litter just accumulates on the floor. Used bottles and cans often lie all over the streets where the party goers have been. Signs of a good party I guess. The Spanish - and possibly the tourists alike, do not need an excuse to have a good time. Life is a good time!

Sort your rubbish before you put it into a dumpster

Cleaning the streets