Cities are often the most overcrowded places, so keeping them clean can be quite a task in itself. With over one million cities in the world, what we want to know is which are the cleanest?
Taking into consideration factors such as air pollution, waste removal, congestion, sewage systems and water drinkability, here are the top five cleanest cities in the world.
Calgary, Canada
Winning the number one spot is Calgary in Canada. Despite having a huge oil and gas industry, the city accommodates for heavy traffic with a well thought-out structure that keeps traffic congestion to a minimum.
75% of the city is powered by renewable energy and they place a large emphasis on recycling. There are specialist transfer stations that categorise rubbish and remove any biodegradable or recyclable materials. As well as this, there is a central wastewater treatment plant where up to 100 million litres of water is purified everyday.
Honolulu, Hawaii
As the highest ranking city in the USA, Honolulu boasts a fantastic transit system for a city where people tend to favour public transport – i.e. buses – over driving their own cars.
Therefore, Honolulu largely reduces its CO2 emissions from traffic and exhaust fumes by including dedicated bus lanes on its roads, in order to accommodate for the number of buses in operation.
Helsinki, Finland
Residents of Helsinki are very proud of the city they live in and do a lot of work off their own backs to make it a clean and nice place to live.
Despite more than 500,000 people living there, it has the feel of a much smaller city. This is partly due to the light rail commuter system that is regularly used by many. In addition to this, the streets are wide, reducing issues of congestion and fumes from traffic.
Ottawa, Canada
Ottawa has various systems in place to keep the city as clean as possible. For instance, they have a light rail system and also sponsor a ‘Spring Cleaning the Capital’ event every spring. This occurs between the months of April and May, where over 60,000 volunteers come together to clean the cities public areas, such as pavements, parks, roadways etc.
Ottawa also has excellent water quality. Many of the drinking water facilities scored 100% in the water quality test.
Minneapolis, U.S.A.
Minneapolis are extremely proud of their clean city and do everything they can to keep it that way. Their strict policies make cleanliness a priority as they make sure that any graffiti found around the city is removed within 24 hours of being reported, smoking is banned in public places, plus 60% of the workforce use public transport to get around, drastically lowering CO2 emissions.
The city also promotes bike riding as an alternative to driving, and even has designated bike lanes for commuters. All of these factors contribute to the overall cleanliness of the city, and are the reason for its number five spot in our blog post!
If you’d like to learn about the professional cleaning contracts and services that we offer at Scott & Sons, please feel free to get in touch with us today.
