Have you ever looked around your local streets and thought, I need to clean up my street!
It takes a great effort to keep clean streets and it’s one that has to be taken seriously. Poor sanitation and a lack of effort to clean streets have taken their toll on many of the world’s great cities.
If you want to encourage better sanitation practices for your city or town, you want to know what it takes to clean streets.
Here are some of the most popular methods:
1. Trucks
One of the most efficient ways of keeping streets clean is through different types of trucks such as a vacuum truck.
These trucks have the ability to absorb debris and other pollution to clean streets. It’s one of the most convenient and efficient forms of street maintenance technology one will find.
Trucks also include street sweepers which clean streets, alleyways, sidewalks, and highways. They do this by spraying water on these streets as well as brush any pollution away. These have been some of the greatest innovations in street maintenance technology. You will seldom find a person sweeping the streets as these trucks are far more efficient.
Let’s also not forget about garbage collection trucks. While we take them for granted now, they play a vital role in keeping clean streets. This is a service much needed in many of the aforementioned polluted cities.
If you find that your local streets could use cleaning, see if you can engage with your city council to provide such trucks to improve sanitation.
2. Planting and Gardening
If you step outside of your house and walk around your polluted streets, you might feel helpless about how to clean it.
However, there’s something you can do in your own house that can have benefits to the whole neighborhood.
Consider planting trees, bushes, and flowers in your front and back yard. A high level of greenery expels a high level of oxygen. This makes the air more breathable, which is one of the first things to go when streets get polluted.
You can also organize such initiatives in public places. You can speak to your local council to see if you can plant trees in your local park. You want to take initiatives to preserve as much nature as possible.
Industrialization is what brings opportunities to your locale and what raises the standard of living. But preservation and environmental consciousness are also crucial for improving the quality of life.
3. Cleaning Graffiti
As much as many folks may think graffiti is a great art form, it does lead to other anti-social behavior. Graffiti is a form of spray painting on public/private property without consent. A scourge of graffiti can lead to a lack of care for the local environment.
Visit any area with high levels of graffiti and you’ll see other pollution follow. You’ll see litter ensue once graffiti becomes more prominent. If you see lots of graffiti, you want to inform your local council. If you catch a graffiti artist spraying on private property, make sure that you inform the owner of the property.
Many graffiti artists, however, shouldn’t always be considered to be criminal. Many are youths who lack direction in life. You can use this as an opportunity to recruit graffiti artists to work to clean up their neighborhoods. They can find more meaning if they do a trash pickup, or help maintain a community garden.
There are also neighborhoods where private property owners have allowed street art. A great example is the Wynwood Art District in Miami. Much of the private property has graffiti art that was done with the consent of the owner. As such, the art gets created by responsible artists as opposed to vagrants.
4. Garbage Collection
As we mentioned in the first method, garbage collection is something we take for granted. But we can’t always depend on municipal garbage collection to clean streets. You can also take active steps to get rid of the trash on your streets.
The best way is to grab a large garbage bag and start picking up whatever litter you see on the streets. You can also grab your friends and neighbors to help you pick up the litter. When others see you participate, they are more likely to join you.
You can also speak to your local council to install more garbage bins across your city. The lack of garbage bins might lead to lazy residents throwing their garbage wherever they see fit. If your local council cannot do this, you can try to install your own garbage bins around the neighborhood. Once a week you can collect the bags of trash and take them to a dumpster.
If you have older residents in your neighborhood, you can volunteer to help them with their trash. You can organize a cleanup of their home or help them take out their garbage.
5. Encourage Public Transportation
This is one aspect of maintaining clean streets that are seldom talked about. Much of the pollution we see across the world, particularly in cities is because of traffic. This is coupled with emissions from cars and other forms of transport.
One way to combat this is to encourage public transportation. You want to speak to your local council if there are possibilities to expand bus routes. You can encourage your neighbors to use ridesharing services as opposed to driving themselves.
You can also offer carpool services on your own. If you take children to school, see if you can take another group of children along with your own.
Taking walks is something else to encourage around the neighborhood. Simple acts to reduce traffic will result in having clean streets in the long run.
Enjoy Your Clean Streets
If you implement these 5 methods, you are sure to see clean streets in your area. At any time, a beautiful area can deteriorate so it’s imperative that you encourage regular cleaning and sanitation services.
Make sure you share this guide with anyone else looking to clean their streets. You can read more great tips on life on our website.