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Fight against littering as a leisure activity: in a Basel district, retirees collect rubbish every week.
Once a week, an unusual trio with eye-catching orange sacks walk through Basel’s St. Johann district: three retirees go on a rubbish collection tour together. They do this voluntarily as part of a Switzerland-wide program for room sponsorships against littering.
Legend:
Equipped with tongs, bucket and collection bag: the voluntary room godmother in Basel’s St. Johann district separates aluminum and glass waste while collecting it.
SRF
For an hour and a half, the group walks through their living quarters, each with long gripping tongs in their hands. They lift many aluminum cans of beer or energy drinks into their collection bags, empty or half-full, as well as plastic packaging or bags with dog waste. They sort their finds for reuse on the go.
The collection is painstaking, detailed work, because a lot of waste lies in the ditch between the parked cars and the pavement. The trio also cleans discounts and front gardens – the cleaning vehicles of the authorities don’t get there well.
The Basel city cleaning department, which organized this room sponsorship, welcomes private support. You never get done with cleaning anyway, and in some neighborhoods things start to look bad again just a few hours after a tour of the government cleaners. Dominik Egli, head of the city cleaning department, is therefore hoping not only for the real, but also for the psychological effect: litter sinners could get a guilty conscience if they saw private individuals picking up their dirt.
We think we’re just going to do something instead of just complaining.
This hope that the waste sinners will learn from this is also part of the motivation of the Basel senior trio. Angered by the ubiquitous littering in their living space, they have volunteered as room godparents. There is also something satisfying about the fact that you then see cleaner streets as a result. There is also a social component with coffee together after the collection tour.
Garbage collection with shopping carts
Waste thrown away in public spaces annoys local residents, creates work and costs for the authorities – and littering is bad for a place’s image. In the case of room sponsorship projects by cities and communities, volunteers take responsibility for a specific area and clean it up regularly. The necessary material is usually made available by the authorities.
600 volunteers throughout Switzerland
According to the IGSU, a good 600 people throughout Switzerland are involved in a room sponsorship. These are organized by 48 institutions, mostly municipalities, but also by schools and associations.
If you did that alone, you could despair of humanity.
Most of these room sponsors are active in German-speaking Switzerland, but some also in French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino. In some places one person is on the move as a space godmother, in other places there are several. Some of them are school classes, some individuals, in some places also groups like the seniors in Basel’s St. Johann district.