© dpa
After a week-long warning strike at the Berlin city cleaning service (BSR), waste disposal is starting up again today. However, according to a spokesperson, it may be a while before the mountain of garbage that has accumulated everywhere is cleared away.
The BSR waste collection service alone failed to collect around 12,000 tons of residual waste last week due to the strike. As a result, many garbage cans are overflowing and garbage bags and garbage of all kinds are often lying around the garbage cans on the ground or in other places. In some cases, the smell has already spread or the garbage has attracted vermin.
The disposal of organic waste garbage cans and recycling garbage cans was also affected, insofar as BSR is responsible for this. Street cleaning also suffered and public waste garbage cans were also not emptied. The 14 BSR recycling centers were also closed for days due to the warning strike, as were the Ruhleben waste-to-energy plant and the mechanical waste treatment plants at times.
Around 1,300 employees with 350 refuse collection vehicles work for the state-owned waste disposal company. There are also other areas of the company that were affected by last week's warning strike to varying degrees and for varying lengths of time. The Verdi trade union had called for the warning strike as part of a wage dispute in the public sector.