Clean the street

The daily life of an academic turned street cleaner POV images are my own

[cleanthestreet]

Living in a city on the banks of a big river has a lot of upsides and few downsides. One of the few is floods. Of course, flood is only really a downside to some people. Like if you live close enough to the river flats - or if you have to deal with the consequences. When a flood comes, people come together, volunteering to fill sandbags and build defences. They are hailed as everyday heroes fighting for their community. But when the flood leaves, everyone goes back to their own business and there is no fanfare for the people who have to go out and clean all the muck, trash and debris away from the public places. Most likely, if you even think about it - you are someone who has to do it.

[cleanthestreet]

When you work in an office or similar, "outside in all types of weather" is just a turn of phrase. When you start working outside, you quickly learn that it is anything but.

Recently around here we have days where there is 10-15° difference between daytime and nighttime, with wind and rain added to the mix occasionally. Since I do shift work,I either end up starting out while it's still dark, or finishing up when it's already dark.

This means that no matter how you dress, you end up either freezing your ass off or sweating your balls off for half of the shift. Actually, with all the sweeping, trash picking and cart pushing the latter is bound to happen anyways.

Workgear is supposed to protect you, but there are limits, doubly so if the company you work for is a cheapskate. Raingear especially is often so sweaty and cumbersome that most of us don't bother. You get wet anyways.

At least snow is more and more rare these days. Nothing gets you as cold and wet and as fast as snow melting into your work clothes as you are shovelling that shit away.

[cleanthestreet]

Depending on what the assignment is, street cleaners can work alone, in pairs or even in large groups. When working alone, either as a sweeper or as litter patrol you can set your own pace and as long as you do a reasonable enough job, no one bothers you. Even though you stick out like a sore thumb in your orange getup, most people just see you as part of the city infrastructure. It can get boring though and you often feel like you barely manage to keep the tide of trash at bay. You clean a place up, look away for a second and the public has made it filthy again...

When you work as part of a crew, that's usually on big cleaning projects and you actually feel like you are making a difference. Also, there is always someone to talk to, and working together makes the shift go by faster. Just not being the only guy in orange hi-vis, picking up trash can feel good sometimes. There is also no time to slack off though, you are under constant supervision. Whatever your background, here you are just another unskilled labourer after all, they have to make sure you don't mess up the schedule or waste taxpayer money idling…

[cleanthestreet]

I spend a lot of time on trash picking duty this year. Apparently there is an incentive to keep the walkways in the district cleaner, so there has to be more 'litter patrols', and I am a regular pick for the picker job. I don't mind it for the most part. I like to be on the move, and carrying a trash bag and a picker around is less cumbersome than pushing a cart.

When it's a nice sunny day, you can even pretend you are just out on a stroll - as long as you ignore the way other people look at you when they see you bend down to pick up their trash.

When you get one of those cold, grey winter mornings though, then there is no pretending. Everyone is either still in bed or in their car on the way to an important job while you are out here, digging something smelly and rotten out of the hedge they casually threw it into.

[cleanthestreet]

Like with most other cities, both street cleaning and rubbish collection are handled by the same company here, which means we have the same uniforms, colours and logos as the garbage men. We don't really meet though, they have a different shift schedule as well as different work stations and depots so we only run into each other on the job randomly. There are a few exceptions to this, like big scheduled cleaning events and the occasional cleaning of an illegal dump site, but for the most part garbage men and street cleaners don't work together or know each other personally. Despite this, there is an unspoken rule that if you see someone else wearing the company uniform on the streets you wave and say hello, even if you have no idea who they are. It's a fellowship of sorts. And as for regular people: most of them don't know or care about the difference anyway. After all, we are all just grubby guys in orange hi-vis, taking care of their trash.

[cleanthestreet]

When you spend 8+ hours a day walking the streets and keeping an eye out for trash, you end up picking up all sorts of stuff. Some of it is people trying to be nice, and leaving their unwanted items out for anyone to grab. Shoes are the most common, but other clothes aren't far behind. Most of it ends up in my trash bags as it's unlikely someone with the right size comes along and they become unusalvagable after a few rainy days or freezing nights.

Sometimes they leave actually useful things though. It took me a surprisingly short time to get over any sort of squeamishness regarding these. One man's trash is another's job perks I guess. These days I have no qualms about taking packed food left on top of a bin, and if something looks still usable, I will dig it out of the trash without hesitation. You learn to ignore the looks.

Then sometimes I find something that's just plain weird, like an intact looking water pump for a heater, a pack of unopened adult diapers or someone's actual family photos scattered around. They make for a fun story at the depot, but at the end of the day, it's all just stuff to clean up, and I am the man for the job.

[cleanthestreet]

The company I work for is publicly funded, which means it buys all the workwear and equipment for us with government contracts, and those change constantly. A huge amount of different stuff has been accumulated during the years, and you get gear depending on when you got hired, what are you assigned to do and what's available.

This means that every time I am assigned to work as part of a crew, it's with guys wearing all sorts of different gloves, vests, overalls trousers, jackets and using many kinds of brooms, shovels and litter picker tools. You are even allowed to wear your own stuff within reason. As long as you have safety shoes, long trousers and an orange (yellow is for the supervisors) hi-vis vest or jacket with the company logo on it, you can pick up work. After all, no matter the type of the gear, there is no mistaking us for anything else on the streets.

[cleanthestreet]

As someone who has never smoked and worked a white collar job for more than a decade, cigarette butts were never something I thought about a lot. At most it was a brief 'That's disgusting' or 'Someone should clean that up' whenever I saw them littering the street or in an overflowing ashtray. These days they are a central part of my daily life. Day shift or night shift, summer or winter there are always cigarette butts around on the street. I sweep them up, empty the public ashtrays and even have to dig them out from the little holes smokes enjoy stuffing them into.

A clean sweep is the most hands off way of dealing them.

Most street litter bins here have ashtrays. Guess whose job it is to empty them?

When they are in a tricky spot, like right under a bin, it's often just easier to pick them up by hand rather than bother with the broom.

And sometimes you don't have a choice. Yes, this bin had an ashtray too. They just preferred to use the hole.

I kinda miss the days I never had to think about them, but hey - someone SHOULD clean them up. Looks like that someone ended up to be me.

[cleanthestreet]

Being a street cleaner usually means that you spend your life as a necessary but unremarkable city utility. The closest I get to becoming relevant is after a snowfall. Having snow means I leave behind cigarette butts and dog turds temporarily, and spend the whole day shovelling sidewalks and spreading grit. It means working hard together under supervision to make sure others can go about their more important lives with as little disturbance as possible. So it's harder work, but less messy, right? That theory lasts right until the moment someone gets annoyed with you for blocking their way and blasts your uniform with the half-melted brown sludge from the road as they drive past. Also, remember those cigarette butts and dog turds? Well, they will still be waiting for me after it all melts. Not like someone else is going to clean them up…

[cleanthestreet]

Picking up trash is something you do constantly as a street cleaner. Whether it's spot-cleaning high traffic areas, seeing people dropping their trash by accident or on purpose or encountering overspilling street litter bins, if it is trash I have to pick it up.

The wooden tongs I am issued with are made from scrap wood. They are shorter and break more easily than "modern" litter pickers. On the other hand, they are actually a bit more easy to use, since they have less chance of just tearing through paper and creating more work.

Less chance does not mean zero though.

At the end of the day I still end up picking trash up by hand a lot. It's worse on the back, but quicker and more reliable. The picker is great when you walk along the route, grabbing a few stray pieces of rubbish on the way, but for anything else - well it's the reason I wear gloves.

[cleanthestreet]

One of the few perks of being a street cleaner is not having to care about your appearance. Is that side-shave ugly? Is your beard scraggly? Hands dirty? Moustache uneven? All anyone will ever notice is the hi-vis uniform with the trash can logo on it. To the general public you are just an orange blob attached to various cleaning equipment. You can look as unkempt or as preppy as you like, it won't make a bit of difference. Freeing in a way. And embarrassing.

[cleanthestreet]

You never feel lower on the totem pole then as a street cleaner on New Years. While people are heading home drunk, tired but satisfied after a great night of partying we are heading out to clean up what they left behind. They are wearing trendy clothes and party hats with fun little accessories, we wear dirty orange hi-vis uniforms and wield bulky cleaning tools. They have fun making messes, we are the ones paid to clean them up.

Everything I could possibly need is right here on the truck. According to my supervisor at least.

The superstition around here is that whatever you are doing on Jan 1, you will be doing it for the rest of the year. Looks like I will be spending a lot of time pushing a wheelie bin around and filling it with someone else's discarded trash.

I might not have a future as a photographer but at least I have my trusty heavy duty dustpan. Ready for anything.

I wasn't ready for this though. Most of those aren't even booze bottles, no idea what the hell happened here.

They almost made it to the bin then decided to leave it for me at the last second. These are a lot less pretty after they are used up, the cases are too big to sweep, too unwieldy to shovel and the ash stains everything if you pick them up by hand.

Maybe I should be asking for hazard pay in the new year...

[cleanthestreet]

If you are a street cleaner, there is no need to worry about life long learning or keeping up with new technologies. Especially around here. The guys working the touristy places in the inner city might get shiny new cleaning tools, but we in the outskirts are stuck with stuff from the soviet era. No need for licenses or certificates!

Maybe it's old, ugly, rusty and unwieldy but at least it's a good workout to push it around, even when its empty.

The tools of the trade mid-sweep with the added extra of some 'artwork' on my barrow. No idea who managed to tag it inside the depot and how.

Even some street litter bins here are remnants of the last century.

Some days the most high-tech thing I work with are the plastic bin liners I replace along my route.

[cleanthestreet]

You can find just about anything when cleaning up other people's trash for a living. Hopefully whoever threw those schoolbooks out put in the time to study them first, or he might also end up dressed in orange, shovelling crap from the side walk.

[cleanthestreet]

Disney princesses get cute birds following them around. The best we can hope for is a confused rat attracted to the smell of trash.

[cleanthestreet]

They say you need to take the time to appreciate art. These can take some time to deal with, even with spreading removal solution over them first. Still not a big fan. Maybe I am just not smart enough.

[cleanthestreet]

Someone dropped that sack, saw that it burst and thought 'I am not cleaning that up, there is someone paid to do it.' He was right.