Trash in Belgrade Part 2
So in an earlier post, I talked about the cleaning of the city at the macro level. This post is to discuss the daily micro cleaning of the parks and streets that occurs throughout the city.
Each of the parks has at least one person assigned to do the daily clean-up. They pick up all the trash which seems to be everywhere in the morning and sweep all the cigarette butts. I have mentioned before the problem with cigarettes in Serbia. They smoke here more cigarettes per capita than any other country. When you sit at a bench in the morning you can see 50-60 butts on the ground that have piled up from the day before.
I use to think that the people of Serbia were real slobs. I do my walk in the park first thing in the morning usually around 7::00 am and there is trash on the ground everywhere. It is especially piled up around the trash cans which are all over the park. I kept thinking well just more step and they could have thrown the trash in the proper container. Then one day I was sitting on my bench (well not personally mine but you know) and watched this huge bird land on the edge of the trash can and start pulling all the trash the bird could reach out and tossing it on the ground. Then it started to spread the trash around as it would eat the scraps that the bird could find. This is when I knew it was not the people in the park being messy.
Additionally, there are street sweepers. Usually men, sometimes in teams that clean up the streets of trash and during the fall of leaves. The sweepers use the brooms that look like a witch is going to hop on and fly off.
With all the various ways they use, over the long haul, Belgrade is kept pretty clean.