The cleaning schedule: the duty set by law, the flexibility the street demands

Article 14 of Municipal Law No. 5393 lists “environment and environmental health, cleaning and solid waste” among local common services. The cleaning schedule is the day-to-day face of that duty: which street, which day, which crew.

The Waste Management Regulation, published in the Official Gazette of 2 April 2015 (No. 29314), lists source-separated collection of municipal waste and a two-stream collection system among its general principles; its Article 8 sets out the duties and responsibilities of municipalities.

The Zero Waste Regulation, which entered into force on publication in the Official Gazette of 12 July 2019 (No. 30829), was prepared — according to the Ministry’s announcement — to set the general principles and implementing rules for establishing a zero waste management system.

For the field, the meaning is clear: instead of one mixed waste stream, several streams, each with its own frequency. The schedule stops being a single-line table; neighbourhood, stream and crew are planned separately.

Every cleaning plan starts at a desk: a list of streets, a vehicle count, shift hours. Then a trench opens on one street, a market sets up on another, cars park outside a school. The plan stays the same; the street changes.

Crews usually make the right call on the ground. But if that call stays in their heads and never returns to the plan, the desk hands out the same plan again next week.

One frequency for the whole city makes planning easy and fieldwork hard. A market street, a school gate and a main road each need different attention. A neighbourhood-level schedule writes those differences into the plan from the start.

• We do not propose one “right frequency”; every neighbourhood has its own rhythm.
• This is not a legal interpretation; for obligations, consult the current text of the regulations.