In many German cities, more garbage ends up on the streets than before. This can be the small chewing gum paper that is carelessly thrown on the sidewalk while walking, often referred to as "litter". Or it can be whole garbage bags, refrigerators, electrical appliances that are deposited somewhere, secretly and at night. They are then there until someone complains and the city picks up the so-called wild bulky waste and disposes of it properly.
Wibke Becker
Editor in the politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
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Katharina Iskandar
Editor responsible for the "Rhine-Main" section of the Sonntagszeitung.
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In Leipzig alone, the amount of this wild bulky waste doubled in the years 2017 to 2021, to two and a half thousand tons annually. In 2017, 129 televisions and other electrical appliances were collected from the streets and squares, in 2021 there were 2638 – twenty times as many.
From Stuttgart it is said that wild waste deposits have "noticeably increased", in Frankfurt and Munich the same. In Hanover, the volume has increased by almost half in the past four years. Many cities report that glass and used clothing containers are places where the garbage is simply dumped.
The situation is similar with litter. In Frankfurt's city center, the number of those "who carelessly disposed of their small waste such as cigarette butts and boxes or even to-go cups" recently increased by 173 percent compared to the previous year, according to statistics from the Frankfurt Public Order Office. It is becoming apparent that this level will be maintained, said a spokesman for the F.A.S. Many cities note that people are increasingly suffering from green spaces, where barbecues and celebrations have been held since the corona period, but the garbage is then carelessly left behind. Andrea Blome, the city director of Cologne, believes that this is a lasting phenomenon, a challenge that cities must accept and learn to deal with appropriately. For example, by cleaning more frequently.
The influential broken window theory
Many citizens do not even notice the increasing littering. At least that's the result of a long-term study by Humboldt University for the Association of Municipal Enterprises. The result, with a focus on Frankfurt and Berlin, was that the city was perceived as cleaner in 2015 than in 2005. The study was extended by a market research institute to the year 2022. The result has just appeared, and the same: in the eyes of the citizens, it will be better, not worse.
One explanation for this could be that cities and waste management are now doing a lot to make the garbage disappear before it is even noticed. And that costs them a lot. Berlin spends about five million euros annually on this, and that's just the cost of uncontrolled bulky waste – not including construction waste and car wrecks. In 2017, the Leipzig-based company paid just under a quarter of a million euros for disposal. In 2021, it was already half a million. In Frankfurt, cleaning costs rose above all in the Bahnhofsviertel, where a particularly large amount of bulky and packaging waste ended up on the streets.
The cities accept the costs. Not only because cleanliness has "gained in importance in recent years", as the Cologne Department for the Environment, Climate and Real Estate puts it. Cities also see garbage as a safety problem. This connection was prominently established by the Broken Windows theory, which was published forty years ago and had an enormous influence, especially on the city of New York. The idea was that a disorderly environment led to crime. Every sign of disorder, such as garbage, a broken window – hence the name – but also beggars should therefore be removed from public space as quickly as possible, otherwise a feeling of insecurity would arise, a downward spiral would be set in motion. A stable neighborhood of families taking care of their homes and children could become an "inhospitable and frightening jungle" within a few months.