Top 10 Cleanest Cities in the World 2016

Everyone loves to live in a nice neighbourhood, free of crime and graffiti, with an assortment of great local schools, shopping and hospitals, but cleanliness is one of the best examples of how when a city transforms its streets into clean and friendly neighbourhoods, the whole city benefits and reaps the rewards. We have compiled a list of the top 10 cleanest cities in the world for 2016, you may be surprised at what we found!

10. Oslo, Norway 

  

Norway is home to one of the most expensive cities in the world, let alone cleanest, but it is the local councils’ insistence on creating outdoor activity areas, clean parks and public highways that impress the most. With clean streets, parks and recreation areas, the city is able to enjoy more outside than most cities. With large teams of street cleaners and people responsible for garbage disposal, Oslo is one city that is sure to impress any visitor to the land of the Norse gods.

9. Stockholm, Sweden

Source: Lyfe Traveler

Just a stones’ throw away from its Nordic neighbour, Sweden is often seen a modern, clean-living and stylish country to live in, possibly thanks to its infamous Ikea stores, but Stockholm has come a long way in recent years to lower its levels of pollution, carbon footprint and target the natural beauty that many tourists keep coming back for.

Once a medieval town that Vikings set sail from, the modern Stockholm is a highly modernised city, yet still, retains its ancient charm.

8. Vienna, Austria

 

Source: Lonely Planet

This culturally rich city in the heart of Europe has made it its mission to clean up the streets and allow for an injection of cash from tourists to start the ball rolling. A superbly classic city that was home to Mozart and Beethoven not so long ago revels in its rich history of music, culture and art.

Schoenbrunn Palace

Known for its imperial palaces and art galleries, Vienna has made great efforts in recent times to introduce cleaner power sources, as well as help clean up the Danube River which runs through the ancient part of the city. With its clean streets and friendly locals, Vienna is now a top holiday destination.

7. Kobe, Japan

Himeji Castle

Kobe, which is located in Osaka Bay in central japan is famous for many things, such as Kobe beef and tragically the Large Earthquake that rocked the city a few years ago. Since then, the city has done its very best to rebuild and remake one of the cleanest cities on the planet in terms of emissions, waste and cleanliness of the streets.

With dedicated sewage treatment laws, large-scale garbage collection and a clean recycling plant that offers some of the best returns on recycled material in the world, Kobe must even smell impressive!

6. Freiburg, Germany

Freiburg in Germany may not be as famous as some of the other entries on this list, but when you find out that the town is known as “Flower City”, you might get an idea of where this is going. Filled with evergreen trees and flowers in the fields, the city is known to produce a large swathe of flora and fauna and is indeed one of the greenest cities in the world.

Source: PlanetWare

The city is big on being eco-friendly and offers a range of large parks and gardens for the locals to enjoy. Perfect as a location for holiday makers, you might be hearing more of this wonderfully clean city in the coming years.

5. Singapore

 

Singapore has long been one of the many jewels in the crown of Asia for many years, with its insistence on creating beautiful parks, gardens and recreational areas around the ancient city. With rubbish collections performed with almost military precision, recycling within homes is incredibly high compared with other cities or even countries.

Source: Singapore Airlines

Singapore keeps its streets clean and its public areas spotless - many has the old adage gone that you can be put in prison for dropping chewing gum on the floor, but the reality is that chewing gum has caused such a great problem for those cleaning it up that the government banned the sale of it in 1992. As well as the reasonably helpful laws of banning spitting in public and a fine for those who do not flush a public toilet.

4. Adelaide, Australia

Source: Lonely Planet

Adelaide is well known to be one of the best places to visit for a vacation, no matter if you are OCD about cleanliness. Situated with the backdrop of the beautiful Mount Lofty ranges, this pure city has a waste management system that works like clockwork, a local population that takes rubbish seriously and a recycling system that is impressively efficient.

The waste management and recycling system in Adelaide recycles an incredible 85% of waste, making it one of the very few cities in the world to be able to achieve this on a large scale. For such a large city, Adelaide continues to push the boundaries of what cleanliness means for a city, making many other towns and cities frantically trying to keep up.

3. The City of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

The city of Luxembourg is one of the old cities at the heart of Europe that benefits from a wealth of history as well as a modern city that deals in finance and banking. The city is much smaller than many of the other cities listed here, so maintaining the city in good condition could be said to be a breeze.

Being a large tourist destination, Luxembourg prides itself on its clean streets and shining museums and is a true gem for anyone who loves to spend time in an old city to take in the culture.

2. Zurich, Switzerland

Source: Darwin Airlines

Zurich is another European city that takes pride in its cleanliness, with a large population that understands the importance of keeping the streets clean, recycling and using less power, water and waste products. Keeping waste to a minimum and using clean energy is where Zurich hits the mark, with the second highest recycling rate amongst its inhabitants, Zurich will continue to offer a pristine holiday destination!

1. Calgary, Canada

Ranking in the top three places of the world’s cleanest city for the past ten years, Calgary has done it again, so something has got to be special about this city. The city focuses on several different areas of cleanliness, from waste management, recycling to population education and even fines for those who flout the law. Fines for dropping a single cigarette butt in a public space range from $500 to $1,000, so the locals know to look out for the streets.

Each home is given a blue bin that itself is recycled, and allows its residents to use for recycling aluminium, plastics and even glass. With every person in on the project, Calgary is set to win next year’s competition if they keep it up.

Now let's pay some tribute to our city! Melbourne is one of the best places to stay in when it comes to quality of living in Australia. Now, it has begun the journey to turning it into one of cleanest cities in the world as well. Metropolitan Bin Hire is playing a major role in the attempt to turn that vision into reality.

The Top Interesting Facts about Waste Management

With environmental concerns facing people’s lives the world over, it is little wonder that so many governments, companies and individuals are turning to more environmentally friendly approaches to their waste. As landfill sites become mountains in their own right, there are many things people can do to help save the environment, local wildlife and even the money in their pockets. Here are some interesting facts about waste management that may change your opinion on going green.

  

Each person in Europe on average creates over 3.5 tonnes of waste per year - this equates to over 1.8 billion tonnes of waste in Europe each year in total.

With more and more people using their recycling bins to dispose of their own personal waste, thankfully this figure should come down in the future. But where does all this waste go? Many landfill sites are chock-full of rubbish, creating no-go zones in many rural areas across Europe.

Many of these land-fill areas of the past have been turned into residential areas that have to be specially piped to ease off some of the marsh gas that is released by the rubbish that has been dumped underneath the city’s suburban areas.

In 2010, Americans recycled 85 million tonnes of waste, accounting for a 34.1% recycling rate.

Recycling rates in western countries are on the rise, but with many third-world countries coming up to speed when it comes to industrialisation and modernization, the world recycling rate is set to fall as more of these nations grow and use more items to turn into waste.

More has to be done to combat the problem of landfills, but more can and is being done to combat the problem in different ways. Biodegradable food packaging is one area of interest for ethical food manufacturers as we move into an era of green living, with many companies being set up that offer edible food packaging or package-free items readily available in many modern supermarkets.

Over 40,000 tonnes of plastic waste is dumped into the world’s oceans each year

This shocking statistic not only says a lot about the way we recycle plastics around the globe, but it also says a lot about how we treat the environment around us. Having already filled many land-fill sites in many countries, we now pollute the seas which have devastating effects on marine life. In the video, there's an example of the effects of dumped plastic waste into the ocean in marine life.

The plastic that is dumped into the seas is having a terrible effect on the mating cycles of many animals, with particular chemicals in the plastics affecting different species in tragic ways. A recent study showed that certain fish have changed their mating habits due to higher than average toxins in the seas, thought to be caused by the chemicals contained in some plastic packaging.

Each year, over 24 million tonnes of grass clippings and leaves are disposed of and not recycled.

By changing the way we use packaging, paper, and even grass clippings we can have a drastic beneficial effect on our environment. Interesting facts about waste management like this show that if the grass clippings alone were to be composted rather than thrown in a landfill, major areas in land-fill space could be conserved, and we would be able to recycle and compost even more than we do presently.

Waste management is an important aspect of modern life that none of us can afford to ignore. We can save the environment, save on our shopping bills and not have to rely on old methods of burying our problems in the sand for future generations to discover.