Street litter: Western vs Eastern Europe

Gee, I dunno. I don't usually do a litter count when I visit places. I have other things on my mind.

I guess he was never in Rome...in Western Europe

If you go to dinner and see a cat walking around an outside cafe, keep eating.

If you return the next night and don't see the cat, don't order the chicken.

Bulgaria/Slovenia/Croatia, 15 years ago, were basically spotless back then. Serbia was clean, except for the roadside mines that hadn’t yet been cleared.

Bucharest, Romania was a nasty dump on that same trip.

Naples, Italy, 10 years ago, trash and broken glass. It’s like there were Litterbug Gangs ruling the streets.

Rome (and Italy in general) last fall had recycling bins on basically every other corner. That’s a fabulous sentiment, recycling recyclables, but the bins weren’t emptied nearly often enough. Fetid odors suggest that people weren’t rinsing out containers adequately. And the overflowing bins meant that some things weren’t getting recycled; they were rolling away or blowing down the street. Sad. At least the bins were being used - but more than they were being emptied!

Outdoor dining in Greece = cats as observers. And chicken?!?!? You’re in Greece - get seafood!.

Then there was the Temple Bar area of Dublin (Western Europe), where the sidewalks were wet at night. It hadn’t been raining, but streaks of liquid were everywhere in the sidewalks. Then it became clear - lots of lads were urinating outside, on the sidewalks. Too drunk/bladder too full to make it to a urinal inside? Maybe that’s where the British term “pissed” comes from, for someone who’s had too much Guinness. Watch your step, or avoid the neighborhood entirely!

Ah, the smells of Paris in July and August. Urine wafting in the breeze. I wonder if that situation has improved since they installed the comical public urinals? I recall those self-cleaning toilets with lines of a dozen or more people waiting to get in, and zero public restrooms in some parks. I learned to restrict my hydration. Set a personal record of not urinating for 8 hours one day.

Milan, Naples, and Rome might be in the top 10.

Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Vienna seemed pretty clean, imo.

Worse trash problem we’ve ever seen was in Reims, France in 2015. We were on a RS tour and walked from the cathedral back to the hotel with another couple. Garbage littered the streets. People were throwing food, toys, bedding, and clothing from their windows to the street below. No bags or trash cans, just loose garbage. We couldn’t believe it. Can’t imagine the trash collectors having to deal with that. Not to mention the rats. Yuck.

When I see armies of cleaners actually hosing down the sidewalks of Madrid at 3 in the morning I swoon at the thought of a 46% top marginal income tax rate.

(Important to note that total tax liabilities there are much closer to what I pay in the US, after state, property, the tax on our economy that is our broken health care system...)

Clean streets vary around the World as well as Europe.
The cleanest countries that I have visited (been to 78) were Japan and Switzerland. Norway, Sweden and Denmark get high marks as well. Germany is pretty good as well as Great Britain.

France, especially big cities not so great. Italy, especially in the south not great at all.

Eastern Europe in general not so bad.

If you are that concerned about trash on the streets, then don't visit many of our large cities in the USA. My Son lives in Philadelphia which I like for a number of reasons, but that city has a huge problem with trash on the streets. People put large garbage (plastic) bags of recycling material out on the streets. Many of these bags get torn and trash seems to be every were.

LA and San Francisco, trash, litter, homeless people defecating in the streets, it is ugly.

Don't even thing of visiting Mexico or South America if you are worried about trash.

I think you will experience, to a degree, what you do further West, larger cities will likely be filthy, mid-size cities and small towns dependent on how effective their trash collection is and what they do to attract tourism. Many of the cleanest places I have seen are highly touristed small to medium towns, go to the "real" towns to experience the locals, not so much. Another factor is cultural, in many places, tossing something to the side, or dumping your garbage in the roadside ditch is just seen as the way it it done. I used to think it was more a cultural thing as you went South, but climate probably plays a role in keeping trash around much longer in a hot and dry area. I don't like it, but if you travel, you will need to put up with it. As for smells? If the city has any age on it, you can bet the sewer system could qualify as an ancient sight, whiffs of sewer gas are one reminder I am in Europe.

I don't think you can generalize across such large geographies as Western and Eastern Europe - it's better if you ask about a specific city and, even then, there are bound to be areas which can be cleaner than others. Trash "situations" could be temporary depending on what's going on (festivals, other major events, stag weekends, etc.) or just pure corruption by the trash companies (Southern Italy and Rome). I'm from Eastern Europe, and care for the environment (including trash) has improved immensely after the fall of Communism, which was a long time ago. I don't think you should have any reason to avoid Eastern Europe on account of litter. But the best thing to do is just to go elsewhere if a city is not to your liking, it's that simple.

What cities/countries in Eastern Europe are you asking about? I found Budapest, Krakow, and Vienna quite clean for large cities if you're actually asking about Central Europe - cleaner than Paris, London, or Rome. I'm not familiar with cities/countries farther east.

Be part of the solution..........
Where you can pick up what you can and properly dispose the litter.

The closer you get to the seashore, the more litter and filth. In Croatia, the inland areas are cleaner than the seaside areas. But also there are more young people at the seasides. In addition, there is the Germanic-Romance axis. I have a distinct impression that the Germanic areas are cleaner. Those old German grannies are out at 5 AM with their toothbrushes, cleaning the streets. Not so much in more Romance areas.

I noticed a difference in litter between (former) East and West Berlin when I was there in April. I stayed on the western edge of Kreuzberg, so in the former east, but just barely. There was some litter where I was staying, but about average for any big city, I thought. But a few times I went into the eastern part of the city and I was shocked at the amount of litter. It rivaled the litter I saw in Rome. To be fair, a lot of trash was piled around the base of overflowing trash cans, but there was plenty of litter just strewn on the ground. Waiting for a U-Bahn one day, I noticed that the tracks below the plaform were filled with garbage. Litter is one of my pet peeves, too, probably because we moved to a gentrifying neighborhood last year where litter is more of a problem than it was in the neighborhood we moved from. (We are 'those neighbors' who always walk the dog with a long handled grabber and trash bag.) Anyway, I did some googling about why litter was such a problem in former East Berlin. I found this article https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-24-7-why-berlin-is-so-dirty/a-42937818 and the author's conclusion was that it reflects the psyche of East Berlin residents. LOL. I never determined if there is a shortage of trash collectors or some other issue with trash pickup infrastructure. I know my hotel had explicit instruction about how to sort my recycling and in the many times I've been to Germany outside Berlin trash cans and recycling facilities were abundant. Some of the other articles I skimmed seemed to blame littering on tourists. I don't know who's to blame, but it's hard to escape litter in the big cities. I also experienced a mind-boggling amount of litter in Paris once, at Trocadero. I was staying nearby and got up early to walk there to watch the sunrise sky behind the Eiffel Tower. The plaza at Trocadero was knee deep in garbage, including broken glass. The night before, there had been some sort of event there, I guess. Even though it was very early, there were already garbage crews gathering up all the trash, including hundreds of empty wine bottles, and power washing the plaza. It just begs the question, why go to enjoy a beautiful sunset and incredible view of the Eiffel tower and leave all your garbage on the ground? I'll never understand.

I started traveling to Europe in 1981 when I moved overseas and remember how Europe was in the 80s compared to currently.

Countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece were significantly poorer than northern European countries in the 80s. That gap clearly has been narrowed. However, my last visit to Greece a few years ago I was disappointed at what I saw as a deterioration of infrastructure and a more run down country. I know the Greek government had a huge fiscal problem of overspending and has had to be bailed out by wealthy EU countries.

One thing that is demonstrably worse than in the 80s is the proliferation of graffiti. You almost never saw it in the 80s, but now it is all over cities like Paris, Venice (on century old buildings), Rome, Barcelona and more.

Aside from having more tourists currently than past decades, I am not sure how much the litter problem has changed since the 80s. Naples wasn't clean in the 80s and last time I was there is still wasn't. Still, Switzerland and Scandinavia were still clean.

I agree with Marbleskies. Instead of complaining, be part of the solution. Pick up trash as you go along. It's a good workout, too. Me and the Hot Wife actually got a plastic garbage bag from our VRBO owner in Paris, and cleaned up around the building one morning. It felt good, like we were giving back. He promised us a free night but I don't know if we'll be back.

We were also impressed with the old German ladies meticulously cleaning the sidewalks outside of their homes. Very impressive! One lady was scraping out the moss between the cracks in the sidewalk. This was a massive job and I wondered how many hours or days until she finished. Overall I found German towns neat and tidy, but not up to the standards of the Scandinavian countries.

@periscope, I'm not sure if you think I'm making it up or what. I spent an afternoon wandering around the neighborhoods between Kottbusser Tor and Oberbaumbrucke and over to the East Side Gallery and up to Ostbanhof. There were overflowing trashcans and litter was strewn all over the ground. Bottles, food wrappers, masks, you name it. (Cigarette butts are so ubiquitous in Europe, I don't even notice them any more.) And that's not even including stuff like burst trash bags and abandoned furniture at the curbs. I've seen plenty of litter in big cities (I live in Atlanta, we have plenty of litter here too) and even by those standards it was a lot of trash.

I will stick my neck out a bit (lets see if i get it chopped off)
In the last 5 years or so I have been to most of Eastern Europe at least once.
First, referring to litter and not so much to poverty; most cities were cleaner than a lot of Rome and Athens, but few were quite as neat as Vienna. Cant think of any that had the Paris dog poop issue; although I have some neighbors in Budapest that may find their dog missing one day....

The dirtiest were Podgorica and Tirana but it wasn't really litter, just poverty and to many people stuck in one place surrounded by crumbling Soviet relics.

I would never trade an opportunity to spend a day in the East.

I just spent more than a week in Istanbul, where dogs and cats living on the streets are an accepted thing. They're well fed, tagged, neutered, dogs given rabies shots, etc. And with all those furry folks freely roaming the streets, I never saw their messes. Even if there's a cleanup crew, they can't be everywhere. I imagined the dogs muat be cleaning up after themselves!

😂I can’t stop laughing & smiling at all the replies.

I’m hardly the veteran traveler, however I’ll give my assessment of the European countries I’ve visited.

Croatia: 🫧🧹A+
Slovenia: 🧼🧽 A+
France: C (I was in nice areas)
Germany: B (I was in nice areas)
Montenegro: A (but I was in touristy areas)
Monto Carlo: A+
Italy: B overall (the Rome I saw wasn’t that bad)
Vs
USA: C-D 🙈I’m truly embarrassed when we get visitors.

I so agree with some others..if your traveling keep your eyes forward and embrace all the wonders the country & people have to offer and teach you.

Good luck & safe travels.

Nova, move to Texas, we get an A.

Saw lots of trash, not litter, along the highways in Sicily. Some pull off areas looked like dumps. The towns themselves were much cleaner.

I think the OP was just trolling for controversy.

When Ella Fitzgerald sang, "I love Paris in the spring time," she did not omit the summer either. "I love Paris in the summer...." She is absolutely right, so do I.

Paris is our favorite city, but I don't miss some of the summer smells wafting unpleasantly on a hot, humid evening. Back in the day it was OK to urinate on the streets of Germany, and boy some of those evenings in Heidelberg were rough. Oktoberfest was something else in this regard, too.

On my recent trip to Paris, the one trash item I noticed everywhere was cigarette butts. I mean everywhere! A disgusting habit and then you just throw it on the sidewalk. It would be so much better if people could put them in the trash.

This is one of those topics people get mad about. I titled a trip review of Spain with something about "Clean Toilets" (comparing them favorably to Italy) and got a lot of grief.

Generally, I've found a big city vs. small town difference. Virtually every city will be pretty dirty around the central train station, including trash, butts and evidence of drug/alcohol use. Some cities are worse than others. Vondelpark in Amsterdam (well out of the center) had more than its share of used needles on the ground as well as active drug use going on. Rome and Naples both have a pretty bad reputation (that I won't dispute). You can find the same in Dublin and Madrid among others.

Unpleasant odors are typical where fresh and saltwater mix - so virtually every port town or fishing village. It isn't something that is affected by cleanliness. Your best bet is to avoid staying near a river mouth.

Often sewer lines aren't vented the way we're accustomed and can have pretty awful odors too. It's not just in cheap places. One way to beat that is to stay with the bathroom down the hall rather than ensuite (but I've had odors coming from sinks as well). It isn't really affected by the cleanliness of the property. I did an exchange with the German Air Force. They treated me like a dignitary and gave me an ensuite bathroom in my quarters, which I would have gladly traded for a bath down the hall. I've had the same in other places too.