Dogs experience the world on a different scale than humans. After walking Chloe around our neighborhood, I was forced to slow down and look around. I noticed every few steps there would be some form of trash. From fallen leaves and cigarette butts to old gum smeared against the pavement. There are no two ways about it, the streets of San Francisco are dirty. However, this is not just a San Francisco phenomenon it is all over the world.

Yes, we have garbage trucks and the occasional "street cleaners" but they don't always keep our sidewalks and streets spotless.

Today's topic will be street sweeping. How it started, various approaches around the world, and my experience.

Street sweeping started over 150 years ago in Manchester, England. The Industrial Revolution had propelled England to lead the world in manufacturing. It also led to some of the dirtiest streets. The purpose of the street sweepers was to collect large pieces of trash in the street. It was thought that smaller pieces of trash and particles would be cleared by the rain. It wasn't until the 1990s(!) that we realized that rain clearing smaller trash becomes stormwater pollutants and leaves taints the water.

Fast forward to today. Here is a San Francisco employee, a few blocks from my old apartment, with a high water pressure wand, cleaning off the sidewalk.

I'll get back to San Francisco later, but first here are a few of my favorite examples of street cleaning around the world.

The humorist and best-selling author David Sedaris famously spends hours every day picking up garbage near his home in Sussex. In fact, a local garbage truck honored his work by naming one of their trucks after him.

In Sweden, they have a term called plogging. Plogging is jogging while picking up trash. It started in 2016 as a reaction to the alarm of rising plastic pollution. It has since spread to over 100 countries and in 2019 an estimated 2,000,000 people plogged. Here is a group at a plogging event in Kent, England.