Waste collection

Authorities in Thessaloniki, northern Greece, are seeking to crack down on the illegal scrap trade, which is seen as fueling the theft of metal from infrastructure like railways and bridges, as well as polluting the environment.

The City of Light is losing its luster with tons of garbage piling up on Paris sidewalks as sanitation workers were on strike for a ninth day Tuesday. The creeping squalor is the most visible sign of widespread anger over a bill to raise the French retirement age by two years.

Turkish street waste collectors have been waiting for legislation from authorities to improve their working conditions, the head of an NGO has said.

Keeping the environment clean in addition to contributing to the economy, street waste collectors have played a vital role on the front lines during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Now they seek better working conditions and social security.

The Coast Guard border police, in co-operation with customs workers and commissioners of the National Environmental Guard have found two barges loaded with over 1,000 tonnes of iron waste arriving in the port of Murfatlar via the Danube River that were to transit trough Romania from Bulgaria to Turkey in breach of legal provisions, according to a press statement released on Tuesday by the Gener

Garbage collectors in Istanbul's Şişli district were deeply shocked when they heard a baby crying in the hopper of the truck on Feb. 20.

A baby believed to be only a few days old was found abandoned in a semi-buried waste container in the southwestern city of Kalamata on Wednesday morning, and a 25-year-old Georgian woman, believed to be its mother, was arrested a few hours later.

The capital's overburdened landfill at Fyli, northwestern Attica, is to remain closed over the weekend amid complaints by garbage truck drivers that they have been obliged to wait up to six hours in lines to reach the dump. 

Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis on Friday unveiled an initiative to improve trash collection in the center of the Greek capital.

Local authority workers will go on strike on Monday in protest at a series of accidents suffered by garbage collectors.

The union representing local authority workers, POE-OTA, called the strike on Friday after the 53-year-old driver of a municipal garbage truck was crushed when he lost control of his vehicle near the capital's main landfill in Fyli, northwestern Athens. 

SOFIA: In a neighbourhood in downtown Sofia, theatregoers are looking for entertainment among the city's rubbish - quite literally.

As night falls, spectators are led from one garbage bin to another, listening to the untold stories of the Bulgarian capital's army of unofficial refuse collectors.