Saturday morning, 7 a.m.: The Aachen city cleaning teams swarm out to ensure cleanliness in their areas. Last Saturday, Aachen's Lord Mayor Dr. Michael Ziemons was also there. "I regularly receive letters from people complaining that the city is not clean at all. I'm going to see for myself," he explains.

He chose the cleaning route from Kaiserplatz via Willy-Brandt-Platz to the bus station and on via Elisenbrunnen to Hartmannstraße. This route will be cleaned twice a day. The Lord Mayor will be accompanied by two experienced city cleaners, "Micki" and "Anto", who have been working for the city cleaning service for twelve and 25 years respectively. They had previously made final arrangements with the head of city operations, Indra Balsam. She was also up early to greet her "orange angels". She sums up her team's job briefly and concisely: "We look after 680 kilometers of roads, 365 kilometers of sidewalks, 4,000 litter bins and numerous playgrounds and green spaces." Currently, dozens of so-called "event garbage cans" are being added to ensure that the waste around the pedestrian zones ends up conveniently in the garbage cans.

Arriving at Kaiserplatz, the Lord Mayor is first given a brief introduction to the various functions of a small sweeper - then it's time to get started. It quickly becomes clear that the night's leftovers in particular cause a considerable amount of work and are often evidence of excessive alcohol consumption. Added to this is classic packaging waste, which is often carelessly left just a few steps away from waste garbage cans. Although the route is cleaned twice a day, the mayor notices a weak point after just a short time: "We need to make adjustments where different responsibilities clash - be it at the entrances to vacant buildings, at businesses or in areas that are rented for outdoor catering, for example, but remain unused in winter. Cleaning these areas is not the responsibility of the city council. We need to find better solutions here together with those responsible."

In addition, further proposals are now to be developed and implemented in order to sustainably improve cleanliness in the city. Dr. Ziemons will be holding further talks with the city council at the start of the new year. "Today was a valuable experience for me. Whenever you take on a task yourself, you can always sense where things are still lacking," summarizes the Lord Mayor, adding appreciatively: "In this case, I was once again able to experience how much passion the teams at Stadtbetrieb put into their work. But a clean city needs many hard-working hands. That's why I'm asking everyone in Aachen to get involved in making our city cleaner. Aachen is a city worth living in and loving - it is worth taking care of our home and treating it with care."