Once people have developed a passion for collecting, they can hardly be stopped, as the Bavarian Minister of Science Markus Blume and the Munich municipal officer Kristina Frank (both CSU) proved on Thursday morning. There they were with a squad of top Bavarian politicians at a garbage collection campaign in the English Garden, and they continued to collect even when the microphones and cameras were no longer aimed at them: the 1.96 meter tall flower bent down and read individual bottle caps and scraps of paper in her hand, and Frank extended her radius of action so far that she was momentarily completely out of sight.
Instead, Munich’s garbage boss presented the biggest find after the hour-long campaign on the meadow between Monopteros and Schwabinger Bach: a colorful children’s shopping cart that she had stuffed full with empty pizza boxes that were also still on the way. State Chancellery Minister Florian Herrmann (CSU) contributed almost new swimming trunks as an extraordinary find. Otherwise, the 80 or so helpers, equipped with gloves, tongs and garbage bags, collected the normal party crap of a night: glass bottles, paper cups, wooden cutlery, plastic foil, paper serviettes, polystyrene boxes, cigarette butts.
When the CSU’s passion for collecting grabs hold of the press event (from left): Minister of Science Markus Blume, Head of State Florian Herrmann, Munich’s municipal officer Kristina Frank and the head of the Ministry of Finance, Harald Hübner.
(Photo: Mark Siaulys Pfeiffer)
Even on an ordinary morning, half a ton of waste accumulates, “that’s just too much,” says Herrmann. With the collection campaign, the CSU politicians wanted to draw attention to the increasing garbage problem in one of the largest city parks in the world – certainly not entirely coincidental shortly before the state elections. “What’s lying around is also dangerous for animals and small children,” warns municipal officer Frank.
“In the last ten years, the garbage in the English Garden has tripled,” says Harald Hübner, head of the Bavarian Ministry of Finance, which is responsible for the palace administration responsible for the English Garden. The waste accumulated especially during the corona pandemic, when many people met and celebrated outdoors because of the closed restaurants. In the peak year of 2021, they left 260 tons of rubbish behind, in 2022 it was 225 – in the English Garden alone, mind you!
In the Corona year 2021, 260 tons of rubbish came together in the English Garden.
(Photo: Mark Siaulys Pfeiffer)
About 80 people took part in the collection campaign for the Monopteros.
(Photo: Mark Siaulys Pfeiffer)
This year, the Palace Department hired a private company to help clean between April and October; Cost: 120,000 euros. The garbage collectors in the English Garden are on duty from five in the morning. “Anyone who comes by here at nine o’clock sees a different park than at six o’clock,” stated Bavaria’s Environment Minister Thorsten Faithr (free voters).
In the meantime, the palace administration has also set up 125 rubbish containers, each with a capacity of one cubic meter, in the English Garden, and although they are often overflowing and surrounded by empty bottles and boxes, there are no plans to increase them. “The English Garden shouldn’t become a garbage container park,” says Hübner. People should “spend a good time here,” adds Herrmann. In order for the park to remain a place worth living in, visitors must also do their part, Blume appealed: “If you can party, you can take your rubbish with you.”