The corona pandemic has exacerbated the littering problem in Switzerland. It’s barbecue time again and people are increasingly celebrating outside instead of in clubs or other party halls. Often people celebrate without considering waste. Many party-goers seem to think that garbage thrown away outside somehow finds its way into a garbage bag.
City cleaners work every day in the early hours of the morning and with great effort to clean up tons of discarded rubbish before dawn.
This is the only way to maintain the impression of cleanliness to a certain extent. Conditions are even worse on weekends. Not only do the cities sink into rubbish at the weekend, the rural areas are also affected.
“When public transport starts, everything has to be clean”
The larger cities have been used to such conditions for many years. Because clubs are closed due to the pandemic, however, people are increasingly celebrating outside. The problem of littering has worsened.
As the “Sunday newspaper” reported that waste piled up like never before in Basel when Germany and France were in lockdown in the spring and everyone in the party came to Basel. In the meantime, the situation has returned to normal.
The cleaning teams start at four o’clock in the morning, Tobias Nussbaum from Verwaltung + Recycling Zürich is quoted as saying: “Everything has to be clean when public transport starts and life starts at seven.”
Littering fines of CHF 300
Accordingly, it costs a good 200 million francs every year to collect the rubbish from carefree passers-by and day-trippers across the country. As the “NZZ am Sonntag” reports, after 2016 a sub-commission in parliament is now making a fresh attempt to deter littering with buses.
The careless throwing away of waste is to be made a criminal offense in the national environmental protection law. Anyone who throws away packaging, cigarette stubs or other rubbish outside or leaves them lying around should therefore be fined up to 300 francs in the future.
Today there is no national regulation on fines. In the canton of Aargau, fines of 300 francs are already payable, in the city of Zurich and Basel fines of up to 80 francs are due. Other cantons, such as Appenzell-Ausserrhoden, do without such rules entirely. Because to atone for a garbage sinner, officials have to catch him red-handed. From Herisau it is said: “Very few are so stupid as to throw their rubbish away in front of the eyes of a police officer”. (kes)