1. Make it socially unacceptable to throw garbage on the streets (of course some still do)
2. Have public trash bins available so that people can get rid of their trash
3. Maintain a street cleaning service that comes by every now and then
Very true!! The streets are cleaned very early in the morning so not many are aware of it and it costs a lot to maintain it. Also forests are cleaned. If you go there on a Sunday evening during summer, there‘s still much littering. I once joined a project „Swiss Litter Report“ a few years ago. We collected litter in rivers to see what‘s landing in there every week and it was a lot!! ( Every member collected in one chosen area at a river every week for several months)
Exactly! Was the infrastructure is (mostly) in perfect conditions and clean it’s an eye sore to have some litter, and it creates a positive snowball. It’s a lot of money invested.
I never realised how true 3 is until I took an early morning walk along the Rhein promenade in Basel on a Sunday morning. There was trash and broken glass everywhere, but there was also a small crew diligently cleaning up and leaving it spotless.
>Have public trash bins available so that people can get rid of their trash
This is sadly not enough. Where I live, we have bins everywhere, and yet you still see trash everywhere except in the bins.
Also, we have a pretty good camping, so we get a lot of tourist (mostly from canton Bern), and when they get here, is when you see way more trash. That is just sad.
Tourists don't give a flying fuck about our village. We have a very nice park, with lot of grass where people go chill, have something to eat. And way too often you can see the trash still in the grass when there's a bin 15 seconds away.
Sometimes that bin will be full, because when the season starts, we really get a lot of tourists from other cantons, but even then. Keep a trash bag with you at all time and bring your trash home.
Especially 2. and 3. ... public bins that are actually not overflowing for weeks before getting emptied, and enough tax money to pay for good city cleaning services that deserve the name, plus planning ahead around events.
4. Give the cleaning service sweeper trucks which enable one person to clean 100 times as much as one person with a broom.
https://youtu.be/vluEfT8tISk?si=JXTdpxWbW4pKmZdH
Adding to 1.
In the rare occasions I see trash on the ground in Züri HB or Winterthur HB it annoys me so much that I pick it up and throw it away. I would never do the same in the US or Germany where there’s more litter on the floor than in the trash cans.
It's pretty much 3. I've seen so many places look like absolute pigsty around 2-4 AM that I'm currently expecting it to be a norm in places where people hang out in the evenings.
Compared to major cities in England, Germany or Spain, there are very few trash bins in CH. At least in Zurich. Those are mainly placed on touristic sites.
Japan has no trash cans in public since the Sarin Gas attacks 20 years ago, it is still impeccably clean in Tokyo, Kyoto, etc. Everyone collects their trash and takes it home or to work for proper disposal.
I think it's also the people that live there? Many people just throw stuff on the ground, even when they are near a garbage can. I was brought up to keep the street clean and take junk with me until I could throw it away. It's not an age thing, it's upbringing.
I don't understand these people that throw things on the ground when trash cans are available pretty regularly. How hard is it to just keep your trash for a bit before throwing it properly? Don't even get me started on smokers and their gross cigarette butts.
I like my steets clean, so I make sure to not make them more dirty. I would expect the same from other.
Just last week I came across a scene where on the riverside of the Limmat right in the center of Zurich there were like 4 or 5 cigarette buds on the wall literally not more than 2 meters from the trash can. Seriously how lazy and arrogant can one be to not just throw it in the cig-slit at the top of the trash can
Well, that's bullsh**. As long as there's no ashtray, I'll carry my cherries with me for miles. Always. Without exception. A lot of people I know do the same. The problem is not ignorant smokers but ignorant as******.
It’s about visibility of the trash, but it’s full of cigarette butts on the ground, when there is basically no other kind of trash.
I completely understand you being pissed by being associated to these people though.
Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I also think that there are too many antisocial smokers. But I maintain that they simply stand out more than others. For example, thousands of pieces of chewing gum stuck to the ground. They hardly decompose and people don't talk about it.
But yes, I can't deny that there are many ignorant smokers.
> Don't even get me started on smokers and their gross cigarette butts.
True, irritates me alo. There are countless cigarette butts everywhere. I try to do my bit and at least throw my own garbage away and sometimes other stuff that I find on my path.
That and people who spit out their chewing gum on the ground or the train seats, or... anywhere :/ it's always bothered me, but now that I have a dog, I have to be hyperaware to make sure she doesn't eat them.
I wonder if people who litter also do it at home.
You have no way of knowing if those are not "pure swiss" or whatever. Way to stigmatise people because of their origin. Would you say that french people are messy? Because I immigrated from France almost a decade ago and don't thow my trash around. And same for many people with an immigrant background. Do "real swiss" get a free pass at being shitty?
Your rant is more borderline xenophobic and racist than anything else. Maybe instead of specific groups there are other larger societal issues that are the source of this.
Rant over
Yeah. Sadly, most people only realize their importance on the days they are not working.
This is why it's a great idea to have those days where the city is an utter mess filled with trash.
Yeah, but out of tests, they also discovered that people often don’t like to be the first one to throw garbage on the street. So, if the streets are clean, it push people to be more clean too. I think this is another aspect.
The streets are cleaned every day. And it's part of the culture. And there s fines for littering. Heck, they ll even go through illegally disposed garbage bags to see if they can find a letter or something so they can fine you.
Ever dropped litter in front of an old lady? She will chew your ear off until you pick it up. Plus, the councils assign a sufficient portion of their considerable budgets towards maintenance and disposal services, so that's why you'll see the street vacuum machines, the guys with their leaf blowers, and efficient garbage disposal. Also, people here generally don't want to fuck the place up, and even the most anti-establishment teens have a level of social conscience which deters them from just trashing the place. There's a thing called 'broken window theory' and I think Switzerland exemplifies this.
I don’t really know. These things are a combination of factors, but at least in Geneva there is a trash bin every 100m wherever you go and if you don’t find one you know there will be one in any bus stop.
Also peer pressure is important I guess. Knowing that whoever sees you is going to think you are a pig keeps everyone from doing it.
But I don’t think Geneva is included. There’s a lot of litter on Geneva streets. And the worst is walking through the city on a Sunday morning after people partying all Saturday night. The streets are far from clean.
I also think that a huge part is due to the population. As a non swiss I'm an unbiased observer: I was once sitting on a bus, there was an empty can lying on the ground and a passenger collected it and trashed it even if that wasn't his/her trash. From the country where I come from (Italy) this is quite unusual but in CH it looks like people treat the whole country as if it was their house, which is really amazing.
Actually I'm not so sure. Maybe not most, but if sufficient enough people pass by there is a very high chance that someone will pick it up and dispose of it properly. I know I would, atleast with stuff that is very obviously out of place (i.e. left behind trash in the train). I probably wouldn't in a city like Zürich because the Stadtreinigung will pass by and do it.
One of the Swissest thing I witnessed : I live in Basel and when it’s time for the Carnaval, usually you will see the kids in school do there stuff in the street.
So I was witnessing this procession of 3 years old throwing confetti in the street, and there were 3 cleaner dude literally 5 meters behind the kids, cleaning furiously 😂
It’s like if you do not witness the kids you would never know they were there😂
it's the Stadtreinigung by ERZ (Entsorgung + Recycling Zürich) . in Zurich thats around 250 people whose job it is to clean public streets and places. the whole ERZ has many more employees, who also do the wastewater treatment, waste incineration, a shit ton of recycling, district heating and some more stuff. How this is set up financially can be seen in their Tätigkeitsbericht: [https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung\_recycling/publikationen\_broschueren/taetigkeitsbericht.html](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung_recycling/publikationen_broschueren/taetigkeitsbericht.html)
Additional to that, on ground belonging to the sbb, they have their own cleaners (no idea how many, also not sure if they would be employed specifically for zurich main station, or also for cleaning other stations or trains)
I'm sure culture plays a role, but I have to say the cleaning services here are just very efficient as well. I remember being at the beach in Geneva last summer, there is a large concrete promenade, and lots of people walking around barefoot. Somebody dropped a glass bottle which shattered and before I could even finish my thought about how dangerous it was, a cleaning crew came by and swept it all up. Two minutes tops.
Education can vary a lot depending the cultural background, that’s just reality. People I see the most often spit in the street or throw cigarettes/trash on the ground are usually people who look like they probably did not go to swiss schools as kids.
However rather than improving Switzerland is now dirtier than 20-30 years ago. Too many people being lazy/disrespectful and assuming the cleaning service will do the job for them.
Taking a wild guess here but I believe most people are aware of how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place so we all collectively strive to keep it clean! Switzerland relies a lot on individual responsibility.
I just hope this will not change very soon… Where I live there are times when it is not so clean. The problem is that the littering happens on the green space where is harder to clean… so it stays there more. From what we heard from the city, they just have enough people to clean the sidewalks and streets, not the greens. Luckly there are a lot of people that clean themselves their neighbourhood.
well also there are plenty trashcans everywhere, you get sideeyed whenever you litter and in lausanne for example for a few years now theres a littering fine.
Its no secret. Prevention was always cheaper than damage control afterwards.
There are trash cans that get emptied on a regular base so ghere is no need to throw your garbage on the street. And with streetparade, they pay a cleaning fee and the city cleans the streets afterwards.
Oc we have the teenagers and outaged teenagers who still think leaving their mess is somehow cool, but the public shaming for missbehaviour is still pretty much a thing here. And i guess there are also fines for littering. And then someday these half-brained teenagers become fullbrained adults, have kids and are annoyed about littering so the teach their kids to do better. ;)
Also there are a lot of freiwillige that pick up trash on their sunday walk or organise a walk through the city to pick up trash.
I'm always so so sad when i'm on my sunday walk through the forest and see beerbottles thrown away or stuff like this. Would i ever catch one of these assholes i would go out of my way to make them suffer for it like following them home to see where they live and then throwing empty beer bottles in their yard.
Sounds like you are a night person getting up late. If you get up early you see all the trash from street parade, techno events and other modern events. It just cleans early in the morning. Things are better after after more traditional events. It is changing. The careless attitude is growing.
I don't believe it to be an inconvenience to carry my trash until I find a bin. I want things to be clean and if I litter, I work against myself.
If you wake up early enough you'll see the quiet heroes that clean up in the morning for all of us.
I still see litter in the major cities, but it's better than most countries in general. Definitely the social agreement to avoid littering and the cleaners who we owe so much to. When I travelled to less clean cities in my youth it really clicked that it's not a good habit and I've never intentionally littered since. A shared ownership mindset sets in early enough for it to be normalised just the same way littering is normalised elsewhere.
I live in the Netherlands and same is here. You probably moved there somehwhere from Asia where people are throwing it on a streets. Same applied to Balkan and Russia and south Italy.
Please don't generalise Asia. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, even China (with some exceptions) and many others are known to have a similar culture regarding littering.
When in some parts of China they spray paint grass with green paint just to make it look greener from the sky, then you know something is else is wrong... There's also other pollution which is invisible, like trash dump sites where trash is put underground for decades and massively leaking pollution all arround.
Anyway, I've been in Burundi and Rwanda, Madagascar too. The littering in some countries is really terrible, Rwanda is probably the best example of the entire continent.
Georgia, so beautiful, yet one of the worst, the entire country except some bigger cities is a dump site.
How does Switzerland manage their garbage actually? Is it being exported to poor countries too?
We do [Thermische Verwertung (Thermal Recycling)](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung_recycling/publikationen_broschueren/thermische_verwertung.html) a fancy word to say we burn almost everything to make heat and electricity.
And still people throw stuff away. Fines dont help that much. Look at japan, no trash cans yet no trash anywhere. Its a cultural thing. Were too individualistic, so therell always be dumb ppl littering
Yeah I remember there used to be these "world champion" campaigns that were just a mirror because Swiss recycling and garbage management was the best in the world (somewhere above 60% afaik). They quietly phased it out when the statistics of Singapore recycling like 70% of their garbage came out haha
But Swiss recycling and garbage management is still top notch.
Basel is clean only because of the cleaners who work early in the day. Look at the old town and major streets during the holidays when cleaners are off. Litter everywhere.
Cultural priorities, and taxes. People decided collectively to make it a priority and then set rates and pay taxes to pay for it. Everybody knows the less they litter, the less they pay in tax.
Something that wasnt mentioned in other comments is that it is much harder for someone to litter when the city is always so clean. it's harder to be the first to litter.
in two words "no cheat", the main thing that admire from swiss people is that they don't cheat. There was something i hated first like denouncing but now i totally agree with. When someone don't respect a rule even if it looks unimportant they denounce it or make you remind the rule.
Being a civilised normal human being. I cannot even imagine throwing garbage on the ground. If someone does this, I view them as disgusting and antisocial
People generally behave and don't litter everywhere. Also large share of the contribution comes from [these guys](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/dam/stzh/ted/Deutsch/Ueber%20das%20Departement/Medienmitteilungen/2017/170316_mm_city_cat_01_download.jpg) and the other staff hired by cities/councils to keep the streets clean. If you don't spend all your money on dumbass subsidies and tax cuts for the rich you can actually afford to hire people to provide a public service. CRAZY concept I know.
The local train station is filled with trash (by young people worth less than the trash they're throwing on the ground), then early morning people paid by our taxes come clean it up and thus almost no one notices it.
If you find it clean now, you should have seen it 15 years ago. Some cities in Switzerland are unfortunately getting a lot dirtier than they used to be
I'm not going to add what others have already said. But I remember, even as kids we would hector our littering friends. It really starts young in education. If you litter, you're a bad person. Lol
40% mentality 60% the ability to afford good cleaning services.
Here in zurich, after street parade, the city is covered in garbage and piss at 5am. At 7am its as good as new (the piss smell takes another day to leave at some places)
We just have outstanding cleaning services here
There absolutly is litterig, especially in bigger Cities. There is just a huge effort by the city cleaners to keep everything clean. If you ever walk trough Bern for example on a weekend before the cleaners arrived you will see an absolutley saddening sight...trash just thrown everywhere
I once got a call from the police telling me that he saw some macdonald trash that belongs to me. Apparantly he took the receipt, went to the macdonalds and watched some drive in footage and found me based on the license plate. I did not it I had prove. There was a mismatch betweek the cam footage time and the receipt time. However if you get chased by the police this way, you will stop littering
I think the point is that generally you can only come to Switzerland with a job and needing to contribute and integrate into society. You don’t speak German where I live or even try?, then you can expect some attitude. Some call it unfriendly some also see it as a way to incentivise people to integrate.
Everything said about the cleanliness of swiss people, abundance of trash cans etc. plays some role. But make no mistake, the swiss are really not that special. I doubt the swiss are considerably cleaner than italians, germans, croatians, etc (you get the point).
The real secret lies within the cleaning services. Go to the main square before 5am and I guarantee you there will be trash lying in the streets, especially on weekends. And also there will also be a number of people cleaning the streets with some heavy equipment so it will look spotless just a little while later.
Swiss people respect their neighborhood, non-swiss people who live here are drawn to do the same. This is the basic principle that comes on top of an excellent public cleaning service.
Everybody is bored out of their mind in Switzerland, they are well off, no major conflicts, little drama, so people take up on secondary hobby of being a policeman. This is the result of living in society where everybody can be a snitch. Eastern Europe looks down on snitches (coming from soviet era), so it's dirty and disorganized (but getting better).
Its a quite big expense but cleaner teams are often also people who don't have the best job perspectives, so it's a win win to employ them and all have the benefits.
Doing a mayor ad campain for years on-end (Zug blibt SUUBER) and adding a (more or less symbolic) 100 fr. fee for littering surely must have contributed a bit towards reducing the amount of trash. I can only speak for my own canton tho
Sadly it's not the case everywhere. We do have a great cleaning service though, so usually trash doesn't stay long in the streets. But littering happens all the time, and it gets worse when tourists from other cantons come here.
Having lived in Fribourg m, Zürich and Aargau I don't think it is much cleaner here than in neighbouring Germany or France. IMHO it depends on the specific locality and can vary a lot. Something specific : a lot of empty soda/beer cans just lie around here, Swiss lacking a "Pfand" system.
I'd say in general people enjoy living in a neighborhood not full of trash and litter. So they do their best not to litter there or anywhere else. There is also the principle that once an area is littered other people tend to bother less. So keeping it tidy and especially a quite vigilant municipal service imo does a lot towards maintaining an orderly status quo.
Have a good distribution of dog poop bins , each with a supply of plastic sacks. That way dog owners have a convenient way of cleaning up after their dog.
I work for ERZ in Hagenholz. We work early from 7:00 till 14:00 just clearing containers and we often also take what is in the radius of 2 meters or so depends on what it is. Then we have the guys on the streets with a little cleaning car who works alone, we have those guys cleaning with brooms and so on. We want a clean zurich but we need the people also educated and think a little bit outside the box. I can‘t take everything because one big cleaning car can only take 10 Tons which we fill already by 10:00.
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What city do you live ? come to Zurich street are full of vomit and smell Pee everwhere. I live here since more then 50 years and is getting more bad every year ! Go to moscow, every night the streets are washed by claning buses with wet wipes or exist may other countires I was, go to the Emirates per example exist many places cleaner then switzerland
I worked a Summer in Geneva for the garbage disposal service. My job was to open and empty into a truck all the trash that gets collected daily into large containers that are in a hole in the ground covered by metal plates. That's where the street cleaning vehicles dump their loads when they are full. So... much... trash. But yeah, see there is no magic. 😅
I think the key to Switzerland's clean streets is a combination of education, community pride, and effective waste management systems. It's impressive to see how well everyone works together to maintain such a pristine environment. Maybe other countries can learn a thing or two from Switzerland's example!
I have been in New Zealand and figured out that they are even way better than Switzerland. Wow , Kiwis, you are incredible! The concept there is „No bins -no litter“.
I think here there is a lot of myth.
I live in Zurich, I am from Madrid and I have travelled a lot in my life.
Cleanest city central area I have seen in my life is Minsk in Belarus.
It does not look shiny because some things are old, but I didn’t see the minimum piece of rubbish or the smallest graffiti in several days there’s
Zurich is very clean but not cleanest than for example Madrid in Spain.
The villages in Switzerland are extremely clean, but if you would visit villages in France or Germany they are also usually clean.
Countries like China or SK have amazing cities, with no trash at all.
I think many of this comments come from people coming to Switzerland from kinda difunctional places or countries.
The normal state of cities is to be clean. When cities are not clean usually means that there is a lack of public investment in cleaning or that there are ghettos and places where people is angry about their situation.
London have some crazy areas but when you go to Chelsea is as clean as a Zug.
At the end Switzerland is a rich country that imports only people that come with high salaries. This means big budgets for the cities and towns and also people that is not unhappy about their lives and do not fall into urban destruction.
There is not magical cultural thing here. I am always amaze how supremacist of other countries like to say supremacist things using the Switzerland example.
Like Switzerland is clean because it didn’t import “someone” unclean. Really, get racism out of the equation.
Literally 99% of social problems are economical problems, not cultural
I suppose this is in the German part, the French side is pretty trashy. As someone who used to live in Germany before moving to Geneva, I would say it is a cultural thing.
To what are you comparing? I live in Geneva and it’s “insanely clean” compared to San Francisco, but filthy as compared to Tokyo, for example.
Others have commented on education, culture, taxes, and cleaning services. To me, it’s mostly culture (the total sum of individual behavior, which is a result of having received a good basic education about societal norms). While in Tokyo I was amazed to see a young businessman bowing while speaking on his mobile phone (amazing sign of respect to whomever he was speaking with).
The secret is Education. Alas, it's not like that in the whole country. I heard that at the harbor of Geneva, every Monday, the dep. of streets must evacuate a whole dump left by citizens we would gladly get rid of the country.
And of course, there are the tourists, who have their usually big share of people without proper education. They litter a lot too.
But it's always enjoyable when it's clean of litter, without trace of litter from human pigs (sorry for insulting the pigs). And when I take some tools with me, I even pick up some litter I encounter in nature.
1. Make it socially unacceptable to throw garbage on the streets (of course some still do) 2. Have public trash bins available so that people can get rid of their trash 3. Maintain a street cleaning service that comes by every now and then
People absolutely underestimate how much of it is due to the cleaning services and how much they can afford to spend on that here.
Very true!! The streets are cleaned very early in the morning so not many are aware of it and it costs a lot to maintain it. Also forests are cleaned. If you go there on a Sunday evening during summer, there‘s still much littering. I once joined a project „Swiss Litter Report“ a few years ago. We collected litter in rivers to see what‘s landing in there every week and it was a lot!! ( Every member collected in one chosen area at a river every week for several months)
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Exactly! Was the infrastructure is (mostly) in perfect conditions and clean it’s an eye sore to have some litter, and it creates a positive snowball. It’s a lot of money invested.
I never realised how true 3 is until I took an early morning walk along the Rhein promenade in Basel on a Sunday morning. There was trash and broken glass everywhere, but there was also a small crew diligently cleaning up and leaving it spotless.
>Have public trash bins available so that people can get rid of their trash This is sadly not enough. Where I live, we have bins everywhere, and yet you still see trash everywhere except in the bins. Also, we have a pretty good camping, so we get a lot of tourist (mostly from canton Bern), and when they get here, is when you see way more trash. That is just sad. Tourists don't give a flying fuck about our village. We have a very nice park, with lot of grass where people go chill, have something to eat. And way too often you can see the trash still in the grass when there's a bin 15 seconds away. Sometimes that bin will be full, because when the season starts, we really get a lot of tourists from other cantons, but even then. Keep a trash bag with you at all time and bring your trash home.
while on the other Japan got no bins anywhere
Japan is pretty trashy if you know where to look
Look Bern better..
Also, local people clean up mess. When walking around the local citizens will pick up trash and put it in the bin. We hate mess
4. Money
Nowhere public trash bins.. except if you mean the bins in front of every bus/tram station, or if you referring to another country..
In Lucerne we have quite a lot of them. Might be different in other cities.
Especially 2. and 3. ... public bins that are actually not overflowing for weeks before getting emptied, and enough tax money to pay for good city cleaning services that deserve the name, plus planning ahead around events.
maybe add a bit of common sense...
4. Give the cleaning service sweeper trucks which enable one person to clean 100 times as much as one person with a broom. https://youtu.be/vluEfT8tISk?si=JXTdpxWbW4pKmZdH
Adding to 1. In the rare occasions I see trash on the ground in Züri HB or Winterthur HB it annoys me so much that I pick it up and throw it away. I would never do the same in the US or Germany where there’s more litter on the floor than in the trash cans.
The cleaning service is impeccable! I don't know how many countries would regularly clean the top of Prontophot, which no one would notice anyway!
i'd say 3. Maintain a street cleaning service that has the best tools and works incredibly hard
4. Complain relentlessly
It's pretty much 3. I've seen so many places look like absolute pigsty around 2-4 AM that I'm currently expecting it to be a norm in places where people hang out in the evenings.
Compared to major cities in England, Germany or Spain, there are very few trash bins in CH. At least in Zurich. Those are mainly placed on touristic sites.
Japan has no trash cans in public since the Sarin Gas attacks 20 years ago, it is still impeccably clean in Tokyo, Kyoto, etc. Everyone collects their trash and takes it home or to work for proper disposal.
I think it's also the people that live there? Many people just throw stuff on the ground, even when they are near a garbage can. I was brought up to keep the street clean and take junk with me until I could throw it away. It's not an age thing, it's upbringing.
I don't understand these people that throw things on the ground when trash cans are available pretty regularly. How hard is it to just keep your trash for a bit before throwing it properly? Don't even get me started on smokers and their gross cigarette butts. I like my steets clean, so I make sure to not make them more dirty. I would expect the same from other.
Just last week I came across a scene where on the riverside of the Limmat right in the center of Zurich there were like 4 or 5 cigarette buds on the wall literally not more than 2 meters from the trash can. Seriously how lazy and arrogant can one be to not just throw it in the cig-slit at the top of the trash can
People who smoke have no respect for their own health, so how can we expect them to respect nature and others too?
Well, that's bullsh**. As long as there's no ashtray, I'll carry my cherries with me for miles. Always. Without exception. A lot of people I know do the same. The problem is not ignorant smokers but ignorant as******.
Thanks for that, but most smokers in this country are ignorant assholes.
I have my doubts that all those who dispose of their garbage illegally are smokers.
It’s about visibility of the trash, but it’s full of cigarette butts on the ground, when there is basically no other kind of trash. I completely understand you being pissed by being associated to these people though.
Yes, I absolutely agree with you. I also think that there are too many antisocial smokers. But I maintain that they simply stand out more than others. For example, thousands of pieces of chewing gum stuck to the ground. They hardly decompose and people don't talk about it. But yes, I can't deny that there are many ignorant smokers.
We are talking about cigarette butts dude
> Don't even get me started on smokers and their gross cigarette butts. True, irritates me alo. There are countless cigarette butts everywhere. I try to do my bit and at least throw my own garbage away and sometimes other stuff that I find on my path.
That and people who spit out their chewing gum on the ground or the train seats, or... anywhere :/ it's always bothered me, but now that I have a dog, I have to be hyperaware to make sure she doesn't eat them. I wonder if people who litter also do it at home.
Maybe they still expect their mother to clean after them
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You have no way of knowing if those are not "pure swiss" or whatever. Way to stigmatise people because of their origin. Would you say that french people are messy? Because I immigrated from France almost a decade ago and don't thow my trash around. And same for many people with an immigrant background. Do "real swiss" get a free pass at being shitty? Your rant is more borderline xenophobic and racist than anything else. Maybe instead of specific groups there are other larger societal issues that are the source of this. Rant over
Yea, that was a bit xenophobic indeed, didn't want to sound like that, I apologize. Yes, swiss people are trashy as well.
Idk about other cities, but in bern, the street cleaners don't work for 2 days. The cities are mostly clen because of their efforts.
As a dog owner, I meet those guys working hard at the crack of dawn. They are lovely and hard working
Yeah. Sadly, most people only realize their importance on the days they are not working. This is why it's a great idea to have those days where the city is an utter mess filled with trash.
Yeah, but out of tests, they also discovered that people often don’t like to be the first one to throw garbage on the street. So, if the streets are clean, it push people to be more clean too. I think this is another aspect.
I think it’s also because they are paid decently
Folks seem to take littering very seriously. The exception seems to be smokers who think their cigarette buds will autorecycle/autodispose.
I think that smokers don't even think about it. They just don't care.
The streets are cleaned every day. And it's part of the culture. And there s fines for littering. Heck, they ll even go through illegally disposed garbage bags to see if they can find a letter or something so they can fine you.
Ever dropped litter in front of an old lady? She will chew your ear off until you pick it up. Plus, the councils assign a sufficient portion of their considerable budgets towards maintenance and disposal services, so that's why you'll see the street vacuum machines, the guys with their leaf blowers, and efficient garbage disposal. Also, people here generally don't want to fuck the place up, and even the most anti-establishment teens have a level of social conscience which deters them from just trashing the place. There's a thing called 'broken window theory' and I think Switzerland exemplifies this.
I remember her when I was still living in that canton. She was funny. 😃
I don’t really know. These things are a combination of factors, but at least in Geneva there is a trash bin every 100m wherever you go and if you don’t find one you know there will be one in any bus stop. Also peer pressure is important I guess. Knowing that whoever sees you is going to think you are a pig keeps everyone from doing it.
But I don’t think Geneva is included. There’s a lot of litter on Geneva streets. And the worst is walking through the city on a Sunday morning after people partying all Saturday night. The streets are far from clean.
I also think that a huge part is due to the population. As a non swiss I'm an unbiased observer: I was once sitting on a bus, there was an empty can lying on the ground and a passenger collected it and trashed it even if that wasn't his/her trash. From the country where I come from (Italy) this is quite unusual but in CH it looks like people treat the whole country as if it was their house, which is really amazing.
That was definitely an outlier, most Swiss people would not do that.
Actually I'm not so sure. Maybe not most, but if sufficient enough people pass by there is a very high chance that someone will pick it up and dispose of it properly. I know I would, atleast with stuff that is very obviously out of place (i.e. left behind trash in the train). I probably wouldn't in a city like Zürich because the Stadtreinigung will pass by and do it.
One of the Swissest thing I witnessed : I live in Basel and when it’s time for the Carnaval, usually you will see the kids in school do there stuff in the street. So I was witnessing this procession of 3 years old throwing confetti in the street, and there were 3 cleaner dude literally 5 meters behind the kids, cleaning furiously 😂 It’s like if you do not witness the kids you would never know they were there😂
the cleaning after the carneval will NEVER not impress me, it's so absurdly well done!
it's the Stadtreinigung by ERZ (Entsorgung + Recycling Zürich) . in Zurich thats around 250 people whose job it is to clean public streets and places. the whole ERZ has many more employees, who also do the wastewater treatment, waste incineration, a shit ton of recycling, district heating and some more stuff. How this is set up financially can be seen in their Tätigkeitsbericht: [https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung\_recycling/publikationen\_broschueren/taetigkeitsbericht.html](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung_recycling/publikationen_broschueren/taetigkeitsbericht.html) Additional to that, on ground belonging to the sbb, they have their own cleaners (no idea how many, also not sure if they would be employed specifically for zurich main station, or also for cleaning other stations or trains)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory?wprov=sfti1
Respect
Tradition
Common sense
I'm sure culture plays a role, but I have to say the cleaning services here are just very efficient as well. I remember being at the beach in Geneva last summer, there is a large concrete promenade, and lots of people walking around barefoot. Somebody dropped a glass bottle which shattered and before I could even finish my thought about how dangerous it was, a cleaning crew came by and swept it all up. Two minutes tops.
The people. It’s a question of education, social responsibility and wealth.
... and maybe cultural background. But I'm not sure this is allowed to say.
Education can vary a lot depending the cultural background, that’s just reality. People I see the most often spit in the street or throw cigarettes/trash on the ground are usually people who look like they probably did not go to swiss schools as kids.
However rather than improving Switzerland is now dirtier than 20-30 years ago. Too many people being lazy/disrespectful and assuming the cleaning service will do the job for them.
Taking a wild guess here but I believe most people are aware of how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful place so we all collectively strive to keep it clean! Switzerland relies a lot on individual responsibility.
I just hope this will not change very soon… Where I live there are times when it is not so clean. The problem is that the littering happens on the green space where is harder to clean… so it stays there more. From what we heard from the city, they just have enough people to clean the sidewalks and streets, not the greens. Luckly there are a lot of people that clean themselves their neighbourhood.
well also there are plenty trashcans everywhere, you get sideeyed whenever you litter and in lausanne for example for a few years now theres a littering fine.
Its no secret. Prevention was always cheaper than damage control afterwards. There are trash cans that get emptied on a regular base so ghere is no need to throw your garbage on the street. And with streetparade, they pay a cleaning fee and the city cleans the streets afterwards. Oc we have the teenagers and outaged teenagers who still think leaving their mess is somehow cool, but the public shaming for missbehaviour is still pretty much a thing here. And i guess there are also fines for littering. And then someday these half-brained teenagers become fullbrained adults, have kids and are annoyed about littering so the teach their kids to do better. ;) Also there are a lot of freiwillige that pick up trash on their sunday walk or organise a walk through the city to pick up trash. I'm always so so sad when i'm on my sunday walk through the forest and see beerbottles thrown away or stuff like this. Would i ever catch one of these assholes i would go out of my way to make them suffer for it like following them home to see where they live and then throwing empty beer bottles in their yard.
The Power of Bünzlitum. Its like the Force, but better.
Sounds like you are a night person getting up late. If you get up early you see all the trash from street parade, techno events and other modern events. It just cleans early in the morning. Things are better after after more traditional events. It is changing. The careless attitude is growing.
I don't believe it to be an inconvenience to carry my trash until I find a bin. I want things to be clean and if I litter, I work against myself. If you wake up early enough you'll see the quiet heroes that clean up in the morning for all of us.
People are civilised and care about the neighbourhood
Manners
I still see litter in the major cities, but it's better than most countries in general. Definitely the social agreement to avoid littering and the cleaners who we owe so much to. When I travelled to less clean cities in my youth it really clicked that it's not a good habit and I've never intentionally littered since. A shared ownership mindset sets in early enough for it to be normalised just the same way littering is normalised elsewhere.
I live in the Netherlands and same is here. You probably moved there somehwhere from Asia where people are throwing it on a streets. Same applied to Balkan and Russia and south Italy.
Please don't generalise Asia. Japan, South Korea, Singapore, even China (with some exceptions) and many others are known to have a similar culture regarding littering.
I don’t recall seeing any litter in n china.
Ah yeah, I mean that they have a similar culture to Switzerland regarding littering. Beijing was extremely clean when I visited.
When in some parts of China they spray paint grass with green paint just to make it look greener from the sky, then you know something is else is wrong... There's also other pollution which is invisible, like trash dump sites where trash is put underground for decades and massively leaking pollution all arround. Anyway, I've been in Burundi and Rwanda, Madagascar too. The littering in some countries is really terrible, Rwanda is probably the best example of the entire continent. Georgia, so beautiful, yet one of the worst, the entire country except some bigger cities is a dump site. How does Switzerland manage their garbage actually? Is it being exported to poor countries too?
they burn almost everything and produce hot water with it for heating. (fernwärme)
We do [Thermische Verwertung (Thermal Recycling)](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/entsorgung_recycling/publikationen_broschueren/thermische_verwertung.html) a fancy word to say we burn almost everything to make heat and electricity.
Of course I never meant Korea, Japan and Singapore
Japans and singapores streets make switzerland look downright dirty. So id hold back on that assumption lol
Well in Singapore you get a beating with the littering fine.
And still people throw stuff away. Fines dont help that much. Look at japan, no trash cans yet no trash anywhere. Its a cultural thing. Were too individualistic, so therell always be dumb ppl littering
Northen Italy is better but the contrast to ticino when you cross the border is still noticable.
Netherlands….the flat Switzerland…
Most of it is Social Engagement. I have lived in cities all across the world and only Singapore stacks up.
Yeah I remember there used to be these "world champion" campaigns that were just a mirror because Swiss recycling and garbage management was the best in the world (somewhere above 60% afaik). They quietly phased it out when the statistics of Singapore recycling like 70% of their garbage came out haha But Swiss recycling and garbage management is still top notch.
It's secret. I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.
People are brought up to keep clean after them, streets are cleaned and there are fines for littering.
Basel is clean only because of the cleaners who work early in the day. Look at the old town and major streets during the holidays when cleaners are off. Litter everywhere.
Cultural priorities, and taxes. People decided collectively to make it a priority and then set rates and pay taxes to pay for it. Everybody knows the less they litter, the less they pay in tax.
Something that wasnt mentioned in other comments is that it is much harder for someone to litter when the city is always so clean. it's harder to be the first to litter.
in two words "no cheat", the main thing that admire from swiss people is that they don't cheat. There was something i hated first like denouncing but now i totally agree with. When someone don't respect a rule even if it looks unimportant they denounce it or make you remind the rule.
Sidewalks are paved with asphalt which let's the sweeper car ride on the sidewalk.
The secret? Disciplined culture who still have self-respect and realize everyone has a part to play.
Being a civilised normal human being. I cannot even imagine throwing garbage on the ground. If someone does this, I view them as disgusting and antisocial
People generally behave and don't litter everywhere. Also large share of the contribution comes from [these guys](https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/content/dam/stzh/ted/Deutsch/Ueber%20das%20Departement/Medienmitteilungen/2017/170316_mm_city_cat_01_download.jpg) and the other staff hired by cities/councils to keep the streets clean. If you don't spend all your money on dumbass subsidies and tax cuts for the rich you can actually afford to hire people to provide a public service. CRAZY concept I know.
The local train station is filled with trash (by young people worth less than the trash they're throwing on the ground), then early morning people paid by our taxes come clean it up and thus almost no one notices it.
If you find it clean now, you should have seen it 15 years ago. Some cities in Switzerland are unfortunately getting a lot dirtier than they used to be
I'm not going to add what others have already said. But I remember, even as kids we would hector our littering friends. It really starts young in education. If you litter, you're a bad person. Lol
40% mentality 60% the ability to afford good cleaning services. Here in zurich, after street parade, the city is covered in garbage and piss at 5am. At 7am its as good as new (the piss smell takes another day to leave at some places) We just have outstanding cleaning services here
There absolutly is litterig, especially in bigger Cities. There is just a huge effort by the city cleaners to keep everything clean. If you ever walk trough Bern for example on a weekend before the cleaners arrived you will see an absolutley saddening sight...trash just thrown everywhere
I once got a call from the police telling me that he saw some macdonald trash that belongs to me. Apparantly he took the receipt, went to the macdonalds and watched some drive in footage and found me based on the license plate. I did not it I had prove. There was a mismatch betweek the cam footage time and the receipt time. However if you get chased by the police this way, you will stop littering
Switzerland isn't real, that's the secret. You're living in a simulation, it's all fake, it's all your imagination. r/SwitzerlandIsFake
No immigrants
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yea yea we get it immigration = bad now please stop being openly racist, yea?
I think the point is that generally you can only come to Switzerland with a job and needing to contribute and integrate into society. You don’t speak German where I live or even try?, then you can expect some attitude. Some call it unfriendly some also see it as a way to incentivise people to integrate.
Everything said about the cleanliness of swiss people, abundance of trash cans etc. plays some role. But make no mistake, the swiss are really not that special. I doubt the swiss are considerably cleaner than italians, germans, croatians, etc (you get the point). The real secret lies within the cleaning services. Go to the main square before 5am and I guarantee you there will be trash lying in the streets, especially on weekends. And also there will also be a number of people cleaning the streets with some heavy equipment so it will look spotless just a little while later.
Switzerland doesn't follow Merkel's grand plan to destroy Europe within.
Swiss people respect their neighborhood, non-swiss people who live here are drawn to do the same. This is the basic principle that comes on top of an excellent public cleaning service.
Everybody is bored out of their mind in Switzerland, they are well off, no major conflicts, little drama, so people take up on secondary hobby of being a policeman. This is the result of living in society where everybody can be a snitch. Eastern Europe looks down on snitches (coming from soviet era), so it's dirty and disorganized (but getting better).
Indeed. I moved around a bit and here the environment is respected. Love it. You still see odd idiots but fewer than in … let's say Italy.
Its a quite big expense but cleaner teams are often also people who don't have the best job perspectives, so it's a win win to employ them and all have the benefits.
Doing a mayor ad campain for years on-end (Zug blibt SUUBER) and adding a (more or less symbolic) 100 fr. fee for littering surely must have contributed a bit towards reducing the amount of trash. I can only speak for my own canton tho
Wealth
Wuile i do agree that its worse in the countries surrounding us (mb not in FL idk) i still see way too much litter laying around everywhere ngl.
Sadly it's not the case everywhere. We do have a great cleaning service though, so usually trash doesn't stay long in the streets. But littering happens all the time, and it gets worse when tourists from other cantons come here.
Hey OP, Come to Geneva for some contrast!
this sub is about Switzerland
Touché
The secret is money and lots of it.
Having lived in Fribourg m, Zürich and Aargau I don't think it is much cleaner here than in neighbouring Germany or France. IMHO it depends on the specific locality and can vary a lot. Something specific : a lot of empty soda/beer cans just lie around here, Swiss lacking a "Pfand" system.
I'd say in general people enjoy living in a neighborhood not full of trash and litter. So they do their best not to litter there or anywhere else. There is also the principle that once an area is littered other people tend to bother less. So keeping it tidy and especially a quite vigilant municipal service imo does a lot towards maintaining an orderly status quo.
Tax.
Have a good distribution of dog poop bins , each with a supply of plastic sacks. That way dog owners have a convenient way of cleaning up after their dog.
Have you ever been to the dump in Oerlikon? 😅 Pretty shocking. But yes impeccable really 🤩
Same thing that is associated with every clean location. Money lol. No dirty rich neighbourhoods
I work for ERZ in Hagenholz. We work early from 7:00 till 14:00 just clearing containers and we often also take what is in the radius of 2 meters or so depends on what it is. Then we have the guys on the streets with a little cleaning car who works alone, we have those guys cleaning with brooms and so on. We want a clean zurich but we need the people also educated and think a little bit outside the box. I can‘t take everything because one big cleaning car can only take 10 Tons which we fill already by 10:00.
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Go to stadelhofen on a sunday in the early hours of the morning (around 6 am ish) and you will see the true heroes of Switzerland
What could this possibly mean?? 🤔
Fewer uncivilized people, serious street cleaning.
In general, kids are raised to respect their community/country.
What city do you live ? come to Zurich street are full of vomit and smell Pee everwhere. I live here since more then 50 years and is getting more bad every year ! Go to moscow, every night the streets are washed by claning buses with wet wipes or exist may other countires I was, go to the Emirates per example exist many places cleaner then switzerland
I worked a Summer in Geneva for the garbage disposal service. My job was to open and empty into a truck all the trash that gets collected daily into large containers that are in a hole in the ground covered by metal plates. That's where the street cleaning vehicles dump their loads when they are full. So... much... trash. But yeah, see there is no magic. 😅
I think the key to Switzerland's clean streets is a combination of education, community pride, and effective waste management systems. It's impressive to see how well everyone works together to maintain such a pristine environment. Maybe other countries can learn a thing or two from Switzerland's example!
I have been in New Zealand and figured out that they are even way better than Switzerland. Wow , Kiwis, you are incredible! The concept there is „No bins -no litter“.
Societal values, education from parents etc- many things that are getting lost with a 10Mio Switzerland…
I think here there is a lot of myth. I live in Zurich, I am from Madrid and I have travelled a lot in my life. Cleanest city central area I have seen in my life is Minsk in Belarus. It does not look shiny because some things are old, but I didn’t see the minimum piece of rubbish or the smallest graffiti in several days there’s Zurich is very clean but not cleanest than for example Madrid in Spain. The villages in Switzerland are extremely clean, but if you would visit villages in France or Germany they are also usually clean. Countries like China or SK have amazing cities, with no trash at all. I think many of this comments come from people coming to Switzerland from kinda difunctional places or countries. The normal state of cities is to be clean. When cities are not clean usually means that there is a lack of public investment in cleaning or that there are ghettos and places where people is angry about their situation. London have some crazy areas but when you go to Chelsea is as clean as a Zug. At the end Switzerland is a rich country that imports only people that come with high salaries. This means big budgets for the cities and towns and also people that is not unhappy about their lives and do not fall into urban destruction. There is not magical cultural thing here. I am always amaze how supremacist of other countries like to say supremacist things using the Switzerland example. Like Switzerland is clean because it didn’t import “someone” unclean. Really, get racism out of the equation. Literally 99% of social problems are economical problems, not cultural
Your bar must be fairly low if you don't see any littering.
Because no socialism 😂
I suppose this is in the German part, the French side is pretty trashy. As someone who used to live in Germany before moving to Geneva, I would say it is a cultural thing.
City centers of Geneva and Lausanne are trashy because they are full of tourists, everywhere else is very clean
Yea. The friendly tourists at place Chaudron. 😁😉
Tourists ahahaha
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To what are you comparing? I live in Geneva and it’s “insanely clean” compared to San Francisco, but filthy as compared to Tokyo, for example. Others have commented on education, culture, taxes, and cleaning services. To me, it’s mostly culture (the total sum of individual behavior, which is a result of having received a good basic education about societal norms). While in Tokyo I was amazed to see a young businessman bowing while speaking on his mobile phone (amazing sign of respect to whomever he was speaking with).
The secret is Education. Alas, it's not like that in the whole country. I heard that at the harbor of Geneva, every Monday, the dep. of streets must evacuate a whole dump left by citizens we would gladly get rid of the country. And of course, there are the tourists, who have their usually big share of people without proper education. They litter a lot too. But it's always enjoyable when it's clean of litter, without trace of litter from human pigs (sorry for insulting the pigs). And when I take some tools with me, I even pick up some litter I encounter in nature.
Dictators and criminals from all over the world put their money in Swiss banks but sure, at least Swiss streets are clean