Litter anywhere, anytime
Apart from 2,000 street sweepers, and 75 trash trucks, Athens has 20 vehicles that wash 987 kilometers of streets. Scores of smaller vehicles collect objects such as mattresses, chairs, sofas and fallen branches scattered about the roads, the capital’s Deputy Mayor Giorgos Dimopoulos said. Street-washing vehicles clean once a week. Trucks collect refuse two to three times a day downtown, because businesses discard waste at any time. And Athenians throw rubbish everywhere. «Downtown there is a bin at every lamppost,» said Dimopoulos, «but they still do it.» They also put ordinary trash in the blue recycling bins, which have to be emptied every day, instead of once a week as originally planned.
