A day in orange
city cleaning - Jasmin Hantl
"Mahlzeit" - "Meal" - "Mahlzeit, Andree" - "Hi" - "Zebrastreifen", "Zebrastreifen, damit die Leute hier über die Straße gehen" - "Dankeschön" - "Bitte, bitte" - "Mahlzeit".
There are no blackberries growing here. Here, every inch is sealed and assigned to a mission area down to the last speck. Here is busy traffic in orange, blue, black, white and colorful. Everything is being moved, is in motion, and is being cleaned up. Everything. I am extremely excited because I like to keep things tidy and I also really enjoy cleaning. When cleaning jobs start, I'm usually the first one to want to take it on. Just like city cleaning.
"If nobody wants to do it, we do it. And that works."
But what does it mean to clean a city? What people, machines and materials have to be used to get there? And what movements are necessary?
"Just for the heck of it, more like this for you guys. Who sits here? The climate protection department sits downstairs. We set it up a year ago. The entire central purchasing department sits on the second floor. They buy everything, from pencils to garbage cans, everything except vehicles. And then we have the lawyers here, also a whole floor, because accidents happen when you are on the road with heavy vehicles. And then we have the lawyers here, also a whole floor, because if you move with heavy vehicles in traffic, then accidents happen. So all accidents, usually not with people, but if you drive with such a big thing through Ottensen, then it can happen that the parking of the vehicle in the second row, that the mirror falls off. Or the people order bulky waste collection, then you drag such a giant cabinet somehow through such a narrow stairwell, come times with the edge somehow to the wall, nice little crack in it, the landowner of course wants to renovate the entire stairwell, at the expense of the city cleaning. And since we handle fee money, we say of course, no, is not, and then we need lawyers. So in the second, I forgot, sit the management and we here from the press office, and in the fourth sits the central control, which somehow do nothing but compile all the operating data and look at it in different ways, see where's it going wrong, where we have not yet reached some target figures that we have set ourselves, how can we counteract. And then as we go forward here."
I was invited by Andree Möller, press officer at Stadtreinigung Hamburg, to take part in a tour for new employees. Together with a trainee and an FSJ student, we walk around the grounds. "Really cool. You get a chance to do a day in orange here, after all, and ride with the column for a change."
"Oh cool."
"Yeah, you probably do that then, right? And there's different areas you can go in there, I think.
"And a day in orange is the theme?"
"Yeah, that's right, that's where you're with the column all day. So it starts at 6 a.m. and then goes until 2 p.m."
We are on the road for almost 2 hours. Between the machine noises and splashing water, I meet friendly faces and am greeted curiously. Especially at lunchtime, there are many people and groups here. Construction work is taking place in front of the entrance to the main building.
"So, big excitement here because they're building a crosswalk over here now."
The foot people are supposed to have the right of way here. It's interesting anyway how the city sanitation department sets priorities, separates and expands areas of responsibility, and thus confronts a built world like Hamburg. So there's the garbage collectors in two-shift systems, who empty the garbage cans and drive through the streets, and the cleaners, who empty trash cans on foot, blow away leaves and pick up people's poop.
"We have a colleague here in Orange who always rides around on an e-bike, an e-load bike. We have ten e-bikes, but that's just by the way. One of them is him with the e-bike, and all he does all day is clean up people's mess. A lot of drop-in. And also into the Münzviertel and then all the way to St. Pauli. And Jungfernstieg, for example, in the morning, very early."
"And that's an assignment for him? Or did he set himself that task?"
"Well, he was asked if he could imagine it. And he said, I'll give it a try. And today he says I don't want to do anything else."
Behind that roll-up door was 303 tons of salt. A nice white mountain of unpurified table salt, which, in combination with sand, may only be spread on very specific areas. Vehicles can be refueled at the farm's own filling station. Whereby:
"To have the fleet climate neutral in 2035. And that means, with an average life span of 10 years, we must actually buy from 2025 only electric vehicles or hydrogen vehicles, In any case no more fuel-powered. That's why we're always so keen on all these experiments. And always scream immediately here and also like to drive around with these prototypes.“
"To have a climate-neutral vehicle fleet by 2035. And that means, with an average lifespan of 10 years, from 2025 we will actually only have to buy electric vehicles or hydrogen vehicles, In any case, no more fuel-powered ones. That's why we're always so keen on all these experiments. And always scream immediately here and also like to drive around with these prototypes."
Preparations for winter maintenance are already in full swing. Vehicles with tricked-out systems are currently being serviced to be ready for the first test runs starting in mid-September.
"Then we have to drive down a few meters here. We'll just have to park up here. And that's where it's going to go in and go out."
The waste that lands on the ground is collected up and in by hand or by machine. In any case, the trash cans are conspicuous in the cityscape. I ask.
"It was staged by an agency in 2004. We said we'd like to paint them red. They were all gray in Hamburg before, all of them, so you couldn't see them if possible. That was a prerequisite of the politicians, they wanted that at all costs. Garbage should not be seen, or containers. And we always wanted them to be somehow conspicuous, so that people would use them, so that they would be seen. And I mean, you don't use one of those things if you don't see it.
And we've always wanted them to be kind of nice and eye-catching so that people would use them, so that people would see them. And I mean, you don't use a thing like that if you don't see it. And they always didn't want that. And then there was the unique opportunity because finally an environmental senator was also an urban development senator. So he was in charge of the cityscape, but also of the environment. Then he said, if we don't convince him now, we've lost. Then he said, no problem for him. With paint on red, we want to make but also somehow even more attention. Then an agency simply came up with a few slogans and we continued. Often they also come from Hamburg. Many tourists, they come then and want either a sticker, as a souvenir, or we also send them, no problem, or they say, they have so many beautiful sayings, I have one there too."
The large mountains and piles, where everything then comes together, become visible elsewhere and possibly create awareness for waste prevention. After all, the 12 tons of waste that such a low-floor vehicle can create must finally be analyzed, separated, recovered and, as best as possible, recycled. The desire for order and cleaning creates more jobs.
"We also have more and more activities. Now we have, for example, new, suddenly we should also clean Planten on Blomen. We need cleaners again. And cleaners. Then we suddenly clean the traffic signs. So the street signs, the street names plus this one-way street, priority street, this whole traffic point. "
Hmm, yes, thank you very much. And I just leave the jam at the reception?
"I'll take one. And I'll give one to Martina."