I’m a German living in Nijmegen since 2020. Since moving here I regularly see groups of school children with their teachers collecting trash all through the city. Sometimes I even see individual adults doing this. They’ll typically wear high visibility vests and have proper equipment (grabbers and pokers) for the job. But they are obviously not working directly for the local garbage disposal service. - so what’s going on here? I really like the idea of regular people keeping the city clean. I think it’s a great value to instill in school children too!
But how exactly does that work? Is this a regular thing in the Netherlands? Do people just go out and collect trash? Do they get the equipment from the local garbage disposal? Is it volunteer work, or payed mini jobs? I’m really curious!
EDIT: I found out that this is the so-called Wijkhelden program of our local garbage disposal service.
I think you can borrow or receive the grabbers from waste management companies for free in a lot of cities. It’s a cheap way for them to improve cleanliness, and people do it voluntarily if the service in their neighborhood isn’t great or there’s lots of loose trash.
People sometimes volunteer to do that. It’s easy to get a grabber or poker and a high visibility vest, but sometimes people borrow those. I should add that it’s not as common throughout the Netherlands as it appears to be where you live, but yes, I’ve seen it too and I personally know someone who does the same from time to time.
I don’t know who you saw, but there are also groups doing this work as punishment for light offenses. “Taakstraf”, community service.