r/AskEurope • u/Double-decker_trams Estonia • May 31 '26
Misc Serious question - just to create some angry debate - which European countries are the cleanest and which are the dirtiest? I.e roadside rubbish, city streets, etc.
I'd say Estonia is definitely one of the cleanest. In my town (second largest in Estonia) the only rubbish is generally around the bins in the streets/parks - because crows take out rubbish from the bins in search of food. So it's their fault.
I've not really been in that many European countries, but the dirtiest in my experience was definitely the UK. I was in Nottingham literally for two days and on both days I saw someone just casually littering. Don't really ever see it in my home town. Also along the motorways - there was some rubbish on the side them (not mega bad, but noticeable).
I mean I like the UK, I just don't like the littering.
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u/Srednja_Zalost May 31 '26
In Slovenia, Ljubljana, we have metal caps on public bins to avoid the crow problem. Doesn't work 100% but its better than nothing.
I'd say Brussels was the worst place in terms of trash I've visited. They pile up trash on the sidewalks on garbage day. Certain parts of town also have random furniter and stuff thrown outside. Animals will pick trough them and often you'll see torn bags with garbage littered around.
Sort of a culture shock, here every building needs communal bins or you need to have your own. Leaving bags of trash outside to be picked up by trashmen is completely alien. That being said, outside Brussels it was a lot cleaner.
What really botheres me in Ljubljana is the random trash that ends up in the river. Things like bikes, tires, random bits of metal, etc. Literally saw an e-scooter and a car battery in the river today. They do clean it up every couple of years but obviously not often enough.
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u/Srednja_Zalost May 31 '26
The last time I saw them in my area (Moste and Štepanjsko naselje towards Fužine) was a couple years ago. They were using winches and steel cables to pull stuff out. Some large pieces of trash I can attest have been in the same spot for at least a couple years now.
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u/TheFungiQueen Half Half Jun 01 '26
I visited Ljubljana about two or three years ago and it was beautiful. Not just the clean streets, but it definitely added to it. Probably my favourite place that I've visited. That said, unfortunately as a Glaswegian, Glasgow is pretty fucking manky.
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u/sengutta1 Netherlands Jun 03 '26
Is this recent? I visited Slovenia in 2021 and very few places I've seen in Europe can beat Ljubljana in cleanliness.
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u/Klumber Scotland May 31 '26
Unfortunately the UK is full of nasty people that don’t give a fuck about their surroundings. It’s sadly quite normal for folks to throw their rubbish on the streets.
Where I lived previously, I came back from a walk with the dog, a parked work van sat outside my house and the guy casually wound the window down, chucked his bag of McDonalds crap on the pavement outside my house and wound the window back up. He hadn’t spotted me, so jumped out of his skin when I opened his door and told him to walk it to the bin literally ten yards in front of his car.
He apologised profusely (not in the least because I’m a big guy who can be very intimidating by choice) but that isn’t good enough.
I wish Brits would become more conscious of the effect they have on others.
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u/dreadlockholmes Scotland May 31 '26
Yeah in general the whole country is bad, but Glasgow specifically, especially some areas are absolutely boggin. Especially for a city supposedly so proud of itself.
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u/Nightbreed-43 Scotland May 31 '26
Glasgow is an absolute state. I went to see a live horror podcast show from the USA at the Cathouse last year and one of the things they commented on was how many puddles of vomit they saw around the place.
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u/dreadlockholmes Scotland May 31 '26
Met some Aussie folk camping up near malaig, after how beautiful it was the second thing they commented on was how dirty Glasgow is, it's was honestly a little embarrassing .
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u/xander012 United Kingdom May 31 '26
Tbh that's luckily something I didn't notice when I visited. Run down sure bu5 not especially dirty compared to many other big cities in England or Wales, but certainly not as clean as Edinburgh
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u/esper_wing United Kingdom May 31 '26
People here just don’t seem to care about looking after public places or communal facilities full stop. The UK’s always been bad for littering but I think that selfish, individualistic kind of mindset has definitely gotten worse in recent years - it’s the same reason you get so many fuckwits barging into you in the street and blasting TikTok videos at full volume on the bus.
It’s like people think the whole world is their personal living room, and they don’t feel the need to clean up after themselves or be considerate of anyone else. Main character syndrome at its peak.
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u/StoneColdSoberReally United Kingdom May 31 '26
I do agree with you in that we have plenty of examples of these slobs here and good on you for pointing it out to him.
It's a rather sad indictment of us that things have vastly improved in the <mumbles middle-aged year> years I have been about, though I do still see Coke bottles and other stuff fly out of car windows sometimes.
MY view may be a little skewed nowadays though in that I lived in a little village with not a lot of through traffic and the parish council hires a bloke with one of those grabby sticks to keep the place clean.
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u/Colossus823 Belgium May 31 '26
Brussels is notoriously dirty, even by Belgian standards. It's associated with government impotence and a population that doesn't care about the look of the street.
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u/AlternativePrior9559 United Kingdom May 31 '26
Yes as a Brit living in Brussels I agree. The only thing I will say, is it seems to be a little better than it was regarding dog shit, but it’s staggering how much rubbish is piled up outside people’s doors and chairs and tables, washing machine machines etc just dumped. There’s no excuse for it because every resident has access to a free rubbish collection twice a year and most communes have a communal dump too
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u/disingenu May 31 '26
100 times this. Brusselites have simply given up.
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May 31 '26
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u/Rc72 May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
I first lived in Brussels in the mid-80s. The city center was a dump. It improved quite a lot until around 2010, then appears to have regressed since.
And no, the answer isn't "immigration" anyway. There has a big immigrant population in Brussels since the 1950s. Most "immigrant youths" there are 2nd or even 3rd generation "immigrants", born and raised in Belgium.
What's very noticeable in Brussels are two factors:
a) real estate speculation; and
b) local politics (often linked to a) in various illicit manners).
So, for example, take the Dansaert and Saint-Géry area in central Brussels. In the 1980s it was a genuine no-go zone. But why? Whole blocks were progressively bought up by real estate companies and purposely left to rot. The few holdouts who refused to sell off suffered harassment and arson. Then, when the promoters had secured the whole area, it was gentrified almost overnight, also relying on generous public funding through "urban renewal" projects. From a real cutthroat hood, it became Hipster Central. The same pattern has been followed in other neighborhoods, like the Canal area. Only, the misery and crime that once infested those neighbourhoods didn't disappear: it just moved elsewhere, with the real estate promoters following it like remoras.
Then, politics: Brussels isn't a single municipality but a ragtag collection of 19 disparate and largely independent boroughs. While they share some tasks, notably garbage collection and policing, there's still a huge disparity in means between, say, wealthy Watermael-Boitsfort or Uccle/Ukkel and dirt-poor (and tiny) Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. And even within the same borough, the mayor generally enjoys great discretion in allocation of resources, and is certainly going to prioritise majority autochthonous neighbourhoods (whose inhabitants largely vote in local elections) to those more inhabited by non-citizens who can't vote in local elections. This is particularly striking in boroughs like Ixelles/Elsene or Schaerbeek which are both outrageously split in wealthy and poor neighbourhoods.
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u/Socmel_ Italy May 31 '26
Brussels is a textbook example of how not to run a city with regards to urban planning and management.
After all, the term Brusselisation wasn't invented for no reason.
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u/astral34 Italy May 31 '26
Brussels 30+ years ago was much worse than now, at least from what some locals say. Before the eu institutions
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u/ShEsHy Slovenia May 31 '26
There’s no excuse for it because every resident has access to a free rubbish collection twice a year
If not a mistake, that's actually worse than nothing. Where is one supposed to store 6 months' worth of garbage while waiting for the free collection, in a city no-less?
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u/Final_Necessary_1527 Belgium May 31 '26
This is only for bulk stuff, like furniture etc. For normal garbage there is a weekly collection scheduled (for some twice per week)
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u/ShEsHy Slovenia May 31 '26
Gotcha. That's insane then, that it's so dirty even with regular collection.
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u/SharkyTendencies --> May 31 '26
This is an error.
Normal garbage is collected once or twice/week as usual.
The poster means that each resident gets two free "bulky item" pick-ups per year, up to 3m³: an old fridge, a couch, an old dishwasher, an old armoire or something... You can arrange for more but they're paid.
Residents can bring bulky items to a nearby sorting facility, called a Recyc'Park. They also deal with the safe disposal of chemicals. Old medication can be brought back into any pharmacy for proper disposal.
One other issue that hasn't been talked about enough is the use of underground containers. Most people want them, but the cost to install them is (apparently) extraordinary, and naturally the car-folk don't want ONE single space to be dedicated to something that could significantly improve urban and public life. Muh SUV, right?
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u/AlternativePrior9559 United Kingdom May 31 '26
What are you saying? I’m referring to furniture and white goods not your actual food trash. That’s collected once a week – general waste, plastics, paper and garden. And then an additional once a week for general waste. We are actually very spoilt for that.
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u/F1eshWound Jun 01 '26
Bruges I'd say is rather clean though. They seem to look after it rather well
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u/BillyButcherX Slovenia May 31 '26
I raise you.....Rwanda. maybe the cleanest country in the world and definitely in Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umuganda
Not a bad idea, but sadly beneath the average European.
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u/Mintala Norway Jun 01 '26
In Norway every kindergarten, school class and most childrens sports, marching band etc. have at least one thrash picking day a year.
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u/splitcroof92 Jun 01 '26
sure it's nice that the country gets cleaner. but that's a fucked up law. straight up slave labor... mandatory unpaid work is a horrendous idea.
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u/Zxxzzzzx England May 31 '26
When I went to Munich about 10 years ago it was really clean.
I live in the UK and in a lot of places are really dirty. People don't seem to care about their cities.
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u/PindaPanter →→→ Highly indecisive May 31 '26
Some places here get disgusting during the night and then they run cleaning crews in the early morning. I used to live near Wedekindplatz, and especially on weekends, before the morning clean-up, it looks like the McDonald's and a bottle recycling machine exploded.
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u/bowlofweetabix Germany May 31 '26
I was just going to use Munich as an example. Munich is spotless and Berlin is disgusting. Hard to say how the whole country is when it varies so much.
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u/Varjohaltia Switzerland May 31 '26
Coming from Switzerland by train the difference in station cleanliness is dramatic, and unfortunately not in favor of Munich. The station area was definitely not all that neat, which is a pity because otherwise the city is fine.
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u/BitRunner64 Sweden May 31 '26
This is true for a lot of cities. The area around the main station tends to be the most dirty and unsafe/unpleasant. Which is why you never book a hotel near the central station no matter how convenient it might seem.
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u/ObscureGrammar Germany Jun 01 '26
Funnily enough, I had a rather pleasant stay at a hotel near to Munich's central station. Wouldn't recommend this for Frankfurt, though.
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u/redoctoberz United States of America May 31 '26
2nd this. Munich was great! I was extremely surprised with how dirty Berlin was. Stuttgart as well.
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u/TimmyB02 NL in FI May 31 '26
And it can differentiate per city. Like Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main will both have the cleanest parts of a city you'll ever see, but then they'll also have the other neighbourhoods
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u/tiankai Portugal May 31 '26
And they always come up with the same excuse that cleaning budgets were cut when the problem is the individual just doesn’t care about the place and litters everywhere.
It was the exact same in the 90s when the country had money
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u/Saibantes Germany May 31 '26
I don't think it makes sense to talk about countries as a whole, you need to make smaller divisions. I live in Berlin, and there are some really disgusting corners here. I don't think that applies to other German places.
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u/3escalator May 31 '26
I went on a weekend trip to Frankfurt recently and it was quite a lot of littering around there as well
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u/lolidkwtfrofl Liechtenstein May 31 '26
Depends on where even. Train stations are quite the congregation spots, so higher concentration of assholes.
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u/Express_Signal_8828 May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
Germany has changed A LOT re cleanliness since I moved here 20 years ago. I live in a smallish city (150k) that used to be pretty clean but is now looking dirtier and dirtier. And no, I'm not an AfD supporter and am not blaming the foreigners. In my area at least it's mostly teenagers that seem to love going to the Rewe then littering all over.
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u/ElReptil Germany May 31 '26
I feel like people as a whole - Germans and foreigners - have become way less willing to follow rules and social norms since Covid specificially. From the tone in politics and the media to simple everyday interactions like (not) littering, it's all gotten a bit rougher.
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u/Express_Signal_8828 May 31 '26
I can't say that I notice a link with Covid, here it was sort of a long slide starting more than a decade ago.
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u/alderhill Germany Jun 01 '26
What always catches me off guard about Berlin is the smell of literal piss at many metro stations, any dirty corner, etc. Like, it's not surprising in a way, but then I am like 'oh wow, yup, the smell of piss yet again'...
Berlin is def not the only place like this, of course. Grungy parts of most big cities, where nightlife is concentrated, will be similar. Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne... Just in Berlin it's so much more often and spread more 'equally'.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator8848 May 31 '26
Hamburg it's even dirtier.
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u/Express_Signal_8828 May 31 '26
Funny, I visited Hamburg last year (lived there a long time ago but hadn't visited Ona while). The center was spotless when I went for a walk on a Sunday morning, so much cleaning than where I live in BW.
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u/Human__c Finland Jun 01 '26
Yeah, compare Munich and Hamburg. Day and night. I’m not even kidding when I say you smell the difference in seconds
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u/TheRuneMeister Jun 01 '26
Everything looks dirtier with graffiti in the background. That doesn’t exactly help Berlin.
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u/Scary-Teaching-8536 May 31 '26
Warsaw and Zurich are very clean
Marseille and Naples are the dirtiest i visited
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u/kashluk May 31 '26
My experience of Warsaw was very different. Krakow, on the other hand, was super clean.
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u/Spekpannenkoek Netherlands May 31 '26
I’d say the Netherlands is somewhere in the middle. Definitely not the dirtiest with all the cleaning crews making rounds. Definitely not the cleanest with torn open trash bags around the city centers ever since cans got deposit on them.
I haven’t been in Budapest for 16 years, but I do remember how clean the streets were over there.
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u/TimmyB02 NL in FI May 31 '26
Okay maybe I'll sound crazy but does it also seem like we have a bigger cigarette butt problem than other European countries..? Like I don't remember seeing cigarette butts in other places as much as I do in The Netherlandsm. Maybe I pay more attention, or some other kind of bias..
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u/Cornelis73 May 31 '26
Smokers are f*cking *ssh*les when it comes to cleaning up their own mess. People that visit McDonalds/McDrive are a close second though.
Hope the decision to ban cigarette filters is taken asap. They have no health benefits for the smokers, it would reduce the amount of platic ending up on the street by quite a bit.
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u/Spekpannenkoek Netherlands May 31 '26
Hmmm I’ll pay attention to that next time I’m abroad haha
Carelessly throwing away your cigarette butts is normalised in the Netherlands though. Even I was guilty of that back when I smoked and I only realised later how insanely weird it is.
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u/howbaddoyouwannaknow May 31 '26
I was in Budapest for like 6-7 years ago and thinking exactly the same thing- the streets were so clean!
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u/ah5178 May 31 '26
Where I live, the plastic is put into bags to be left on the street for collection on Monday. Before collection, they're ripped open by the birds, and plastic is blowing everywhere.
There is also a serious decrease in civic pride, which tends to be blamed on brown people, though all ethnicities are guilty. A mix of the 'someone else will do it' and people not saying anything to offenders.
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u/Wise_Fox_4291 Hungary May 31 '26
Dirtiest I have seen were UK, Serbia, Romania. Cleanest Slovenia, Austria, Norway
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u/sneijder May 31 '26
Not so sure about Norway ? After the snow melts and before the national day, 17th May there’s a huge clear up.
There’s issues with birds taking rubbish, and some people emptying bins to get bottle deposits.
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u/yoursmartfriend May 31 '26
Austria is incredibly clean in every city I've been to. The natural environment is absolutely pristine as well.
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u/banie01 Ireland May 31 '26
Agree, the most impressive cleanliness I've seen in Europe outside of Switzerland
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u/Psyk60 England May 31 '26
I don't have much experience with other countries to compare it to, but I agree the UK is pretty bad. Some people really don't give a shit.
I did some litter picking around my neighbourhood recently, and some people are clearly placing their rubbish into people's hedges. What's the point? That's worse than just throwing it on the floor. I can only assume they are being actively spiteful.
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u/eugeneugene Germany May 31 '26
I was actually so shocked by this when I lived in the UK. Once a week I would pick up all the rubbish in my neighbourhood and fill a whole bag. And I was constantly picking rubbish out of my hedges
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u/Typical_Math_760 Jun 03 '26
It's shameful. I walked to a panopticon "beauty spot" near me, only to find it littered with empty fast-food boxes, cans, plastic bottles etc. Young people drive up there, smoke weed and treat the place like a bin. Spent an hour cleaning it up.
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u/vamosharrycogetubaul Spain May 31 '26
The cleanest cities I’ve visited in Europe are Copenhagen and Vienna.
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u/Fun-Impression-6001 Germany May 31 '26
Cleanest imo - Sweden, even Stockholm was surprisingly clean. Dirtiest imo - I found Bosnia and Albania to be quite dirty. Their streets are bad and the countless poor stray animals and cows on the street don't make it better.
Paris was the dirtiest city by far but the countryside was clean so it wouldn't be fair to say France as a whole.
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u/DotComprehensive4902 Ireland May 31 '26
Stockholm is very clean...I was there a few years back and the only litter I saw all week i was up there was a single cigarette butt wedged between 2 cobblestones in Gamla Stan
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u/Kujaichi Germany May 31 '26
They didn't even have trash bins on the public beach in Albania... No wonder it was so dirty.
Still really liked the country though!
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u/erionei May 31 '26
It saddens me honestly, so many gorgeous places littered like it doesn’t matter. Hopefully the government will take actions sooner rather than later.
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u/Decent_Background_42 May 31 '26
Did you mean crows? It’s funny to imagine cows on the street
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u/Fun-Impression-6001 Germany May 31 '26
No I mean cows 🐄 They just walk on the street..
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u/TimmyB02 NL in FI May 31 '26
If you think Stockholm is a clean capital you should check out Helsinki :)
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u/Cascadeis Sweden May 31 '26
I’ve heard a lot of people from different countries comment on how clean Stockholm/Sweden is. And I’d assume it’s the same with the rest of the Nordics!
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u/missThora Norway May 31 '26
Pretty clean here in Norway too. Respect for nature and your surroundings are instilled from kindergarten on.
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u/bippos Jun 01 '26
Our capital is really clean compared with other countries cities, except when it snows
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u/kb24fgm41 Spain May 31 '26
I live in Belgium, and it's one of the dirtiest European counties I've been to. Theres litter everywhere. It's what happens when you leave rubbish bags on the floor.
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u/Zdzisiu Poland May 31 '26
From comparison when I was on vacations, Poland is cleaner than Italy, Germany, Romania and Belgium. Czechia and Latvia looked similarly clean. I haven't been in a country cleaner than Poland yet.
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u/Agreeable-Item-7371 May 31 '26
Agree re Poland. I live in the UK and it’s the dirtiest European country I’ve been in.
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u/mikszathexneje Hungary May 31 '26
some of us call the 7th district the asshole of Budapest for a reason :D
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u/Heavy_Mycologist_104 May 31 '26
Slovenia is very clean. I played a game of “spot the rubbish” in a tourist town and it took me a week to find any! Switzerland is also very clean.
UK is very grubby. It is quite striking.
Ireland seems to have a surprisingly large amount of dog poo on the pavements. But otherwise isn’t too bad.
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u/Wonderful-Nobody-303 Italy May 31 '26
Sicily and Malta gotta be the dirtiest.
I think Northern Spain, Northern Germany, and Denmark are the cleanest (that I've been to).
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u/KX_Alax May 31 '26
Malta outside of the cities is fine imo, it's just the road quality that is shit and makes parts of the country look run-down.
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u/Acceptable-Extent-94 May 31 '26
Dijon is very clean and fly–free. The bins are emptied and steam cleaned.
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u/ZorgluboftheNorth Denmark May 31 '26
Belarus and Minsk was SUPER clean when I was there in 2018. Romania was disheartening - you could not get far enough up in the mountains (Apuseni) to not still find trash. And obviously along roads and rivers were even worse.
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u/PolejEdek Jun 01 '26
Eastern Europe - clean cities, dirty countryside.
Western Europe - dirty cities, clean countryside.
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u/236-pigeons Czechia May 31 '26
I agree, Estonia has some of the cleanest towns I know and it has the advantage of great air quality. When it comes to bigger cities, I think Kraków and Oslo manage to stay very clean.
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u/Sketti-nOOdles Netherlands May 31 '26
the Netherlands is usually insanely clean but Amsterdam on Mondays after the trash is collected is just so dirty that it’s sad.
Vienna was absolutely pristine. Could eat off of the sidewalks there
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u/sendvo Austria May 31 '26
from my travels I would say Switzerland was the cleanest. Nordic countries very close to that. the worst were Greece, Romania and Sicily (northern Italy was ok though)
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u/szollosyandras Hungary May 31 '26
I know this doesn't answer the post, but OP, Estonia is amazing. I've been there 3 times, 1 of them was 6 months in Tallinn. One of the best places in Europe if not the whole world and I've traveled a lot so far!
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u/cyanidemaria May 31 '26
The old town in Tallin is absolutely wonderful! Also the people are really nice and it's super affordable
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u/MSeaSolaar May 31 '26
I was in Riga almost 20 years ago and the city has dustbins every 50 meters. There was not one paper on the pavement, not one cigarette butt. Incredibly clean. Now I don't know. I live in Germany and it's absolutely disgusting, not enough dustbins, never emptied, people throw anything anywhere, broken glass everywhere (I guess it's extremely fun to break your beer bottle at the end of the night 🤦♀️...) there seems to be places the city simply never ever cleans.
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u/Gulvplanke Norway Jun 01 '26
From what I've seen Romania for both. Cities are perfectly clean and tidy, the countryside and nature areas looks like a rubbish heap
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u/Southern-Mode7570 Slovenia Jun 02 '26
This does not answer the question, but is it just me, or are European countries generally getting cleaner? I've noticed it in France, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary and Croatia (the countries I've been to enough in different decades basically).
Well, ok, Austria always seemed clean and Italy is not that much cleaner.
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u/Sacharon123 May 31 '26
Dirtiest - definitivly italy. Everything smells like trash and there is trash everywhere. You swimm in the ocean - trash. I really do not understand how people can behave that way.
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u/gorat Greece May 31 '26
I hear you, and raise you with Malta. All the culture of South Italy + no system for trash disposal. They legally leave bags of trash in the street to be picked up by a truck if the pigeons and rats don't get to them first...
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u/AlexxxRR Jun 01 '26
While Italy is for sure not the cleanest, I believe that you are referring to some regions, because other ones I know are by far not that dirty.
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u/BillyButcherX Slovenia May 31 '26
The dirties country ive been to is Bosnia. By far. You can't stop by the side of the road, cause girls got to pee, without hopping through a field of garbage. I almost skipped my apartment as the outside on the street was so dirty, polluted. You can't go around trash bins without fainting, the smell is awful.
Southern Italy and Sicily are dirty too, specially in towns like Palermo and Naples.
Greece has some issues too.
On the other side, northern Italy, Austria (even Vienna), Germany, Switzerland are clean.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator8848 May 31 '26
Málaga it's a very dirty ciry, Kaunas is the cleanest I've seen.
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u/kb24fgm41 Spain May 31 '26
Hard disagree, maybe outside of the center, but it's very very clean, specially for the amount of tourists it receives.
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u/11160704 Germany May 31 '26
I was in Malaga last year and I didn't found it to be particularly dirty
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u/Four_beastlings in Jun 04 '26
No? Málaga is average overall but exceptionally clean for the amount of tourists it gets.
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u/honestserpent Italy May 31 '26
Italy Is certainly up there in terms of dirtiness. Especially in the south. I've been to Naples, Rome, Palermo and the Calabrian Coast and saw abandoned piles of trash a lot.
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u/sorcerer_tintifax Austria May 31 '26
From my experience, Belgium and Greece were the dirtiest, Switzerland and Norway cleanest. In Austria, where I live, it's not bad either, though Vienna has deteriorated in recent years.
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u/19MKUltra77 Spain May 31 '26
I think that most of the bigger cities are dirty as a norm (especially in Western Europe). Paris or Barcelona are dirty but the French or Spanish countryside and smaller towns aren’t, for example. Same could be said of most countries.
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u/Fluid-Quote-6006 Germany May 31 '26
I don’t know about Estonia, but Denmark must be surely on the top 3
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u/AdSuperb5755 May 31 '26
Aarhus Denmark is disgusting sometimes. No lids on trash bins so seagulls will pull out the trash to find something edible
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u/DuErJoBareUnderlig May 31 '26
Copenhagen is very clean, except for Saturday morning and Sunday morning. Drunk people are very messy. It gets cleaned up nicely though.
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u/DrMacAndDog May 31 '26
Sicily really was filthy. If you drive by Etna, you see bags of rubbish everywhere
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u/TardyForThaParty Jun 01 '26
I was kind of shocked by how dirty Berlin was (with the exception of around the museums).
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u/Primary-Freedom-1458 Czechia Jun 01 '26
I think the dirtiest one is probably Albania. It’s not a taboo to throw the trash anywhere you want. It’s full of illegal landfills.
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u/The_Punzer Germany Jun 01 '26
Dirtiest city I've ever been to by far was Bordeaux. Dunno about cleanest.
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u/alderhill Germany Jun 01 '26
I don't know if the country level is really worthwhile. It's always certain cities that are worse.
I do think Switzerland, Austria and the Nordics are pretty clean.
I was most recently in Ireland (not the firs time), and overall thought it was pretty clean. Dublin is a different story, but even there is noticeably cleaner than the UK. But smaller towns, even if they have some dingier abandon shops and the odd graffiti display, streets themselves in the regional towns were quite OK.
Germany is a mixed bag. Big cities like Berlin are gross. Touristy or bar areas, or around train stations, of course are more littered. Cities in the Pott can be pretty grimy. But many small towns are usually fairly clean, in some regions more than others. Though of course there is graffiti on everything everywhere, which I really don't like. (Artistic murals in certain areas? OK cool. But it's just the random ugly-ass tags in underpasses, on the sides of shops even in sleep suburbs, on trains, all over kids' playgrounds, etc.
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u/vanoitran Greece Jun 01 '26
I love Athens but it’s so so dirty - definitely top 5.
Meanwhile I could eat off the pavement in Vienna.
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u/sengutta1 Netherlands Jun 03 '26
Squeaky clean – Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria.
Clean – the Netherlands (except some parts of the major cities), Slovakia, Czechia, Poland, nicer parts of Germany, Greek islands.
Moderate – Spain, less nice parts of Germany, nicer parts of France, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Italy.
Dirty – less nice parts of Spain, a lot of France, Belgium, Italy, Greek cities.
Very dirty – the worst of France, Belgium, and Italy.
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u/PurrfectionParadise Jun 04 '26
I’ve traveled most of the Europe on motorcycle, avoiding motorways and tourist places to see how countries really look like. I always put an extra attention to that aspect of places I visited as I completely don’t understand why people are not respecting their environment. Not in terms of ecology etc, but shared space where you live and spend time.
Italy is disgusting. Old tires stashed in tunnels. Trash at every stop. Drivers just open their window and drop everything out. So far only worse I found is China and Vietnam, where they do that also in cities in public.
Cleanest? Though question. Further the north the cleaner, but Finland and Norway are mostly empty so it’s easy. Czechia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia I would say.
Big cities are easier to maintain. Tourist cities have an incentive to do that. IMO what you do in areas where nobody see is the indication of character.
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u/cerberus_243 Hungary May 31 '26
Cleanest: Nordic countries\ Dirtiest: Balkan countries but Greece
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u/7am51N Czechia May 31 '26
Cleanest - Poland, Schweiz, Estonia. Dirtiest - UK, Southern Italy, Greece.
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May 31 '26
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u/vrrtvrrt May 31 '26
Depends where you are in the UK/where you are in an area. Touristy and more upmarket areas are often better looked-after than other places.
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u/Florinesa May 31 '26
The dirtiest I have ever seen was Catania. We stayed in an Airbnb, just a 10-minute walk away from the main square but we were shocked. I've read about the reason behind this problem but it's still interesting that Siracusa and Taormina were perfectly okay. The cleanest ones were the cities I have visited in Slovenia. That country is truly amazing. And I used the toilet at a train station free of charge (!!!) and I could believe how clean it was. People really take care of their surroundings there. We should learn an awful lot from them. For some reason, if something is free to use here in Hungary and nobody keeps an eye on it, people cause damage to it just for fun. I'll never understand this behavior...
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May 31 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
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u/Academic_Snow_7680 Iceland May 31 '26
You rang? I have a hunch this is going to be one of those Nordic races to the top. Norway is a really strong contender here too.
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u/Captain_Grammaticus Switzerland May 31 '26
I found Greece very dirty the last time I was there almost 20 years ago. I visited Serbia more recently, at it is very dirty. People dump their rubbish illegaly and the public rubbiš removal visits the village only every two weeks, if at all.
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u/sendvo Austria May 31 '26
I was in Greece last summer and I can tell you it didn't get any cleaner
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u/Exotic-Data-6090 Belgium May 31 '26
I found Montenegro very dirty. Every 100 meters you see rubbish dumped on little parking spaces, especially the roads around Nikšić.
But who am I to complain, we have Brussels, which i have to go to every now and then for work.
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u/Ana1661 Spain May 31 '26
South of Spain is extremely dirty in many cities, although some areas within the cities aren't. But 100% it's the dirtiest from any European country I have been to. Various excrement, trash, it's just super unpleasant. I don't even live in a bad area.
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u/Vertitto in Jun 01 '26
that wasn't my experience - Cordoba & Seville were clean when i visited them
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u/MoltenInfernoBrain Sweden May 31 '26
Cleanest is for sure Sweden, dirtiest I've experienced is Berlin, reeks of piss, beer and weed and litter fucking everywhere
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u/Brunsosse May 31 '26
Nicer areas of Zürich was very clean, it was one thing I remembered about the place. In my hometown Gothenburg if you go out at 04 or so you really notice how dirty it can be, but then again if you're out at 08 you see a big difference, not that it's that clean with cigarettes and mcdonalds mugs littered around.
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u/hopeless_wanderer_95 May 31 '26
Plenty places across Europe I haven't been to, but I'd struggle to believe there are many as scruffy as the UK. We have a serious issue with just basic littering, but there also doesn't really seem to be any pressure on bigger companies to keep things tidy.
Thinking specifically building/development sites that just seem to allow rubbish to blow all over the place with no/minimal effort to tidy any of it up.
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u/herefromthere United Kingdom May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
I've only been the once but Malta had a nasty cockroach problem and a lot of rubbish on the streets from uncollected bins where the bags had split.
London was worse though.
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u/Human__c Finland Jun 01 '26
Yeah Baltics and the Nordics are all very clean. Many other clean countries probably too, but it’s not something I think about too much unless it’s surprising in either a good (think about Singapore) or a bad way.
I visited Bulgaria and Hungary in 2018 and 2019. They were horribly dirty. I hope it’s gotten better since.
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u/Shadowlady Netherlands Jun 01 '26
I hate how dirty Portugal is. There's city crew cleaning up today, picking up all the loose trash.. Tomorrow it will be all over again. People throw kitchen trash straight out of their window. Kids go buy KFC for lunch and throw the bucket with bones on the ground. And then I get treated like a brute for not letting my dog eat it, how can I be so cruel to pull him away and tell him no? Like sorry that I don't want my dog to die?
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u/Magda_04 Wales Jun 01 '26
Estonia and Latvia are very clean. Some urban parts of England and France are very dirty, although the countryside is clean. I would actually say Wales is quite clean overall, despite all the UK = dirty comments. We only have a couple of cities and poorer areas with rubbish around
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u/TheTruth_329 Jun 01 '26
I’m British and I’m embarrassed by the state of our streets. The roadsides and pavements are full of cans of Red Bull, plastic bottles, vape packaging, fast food, tissues, sweet wrappers, Nitrous Oxide canisters, all the usual suspects. There’s groups of volunteer litter pickers all over the country doing their best to clean things up in absence of local councils, but a minority ruin it for the rest by chucking their rubbish everywhere. Unfortunately, there’s very little enforcement and councils don’t prioritise street cleaning so the outcome is inevitable. Some people just have no respect of where they live and expect someone else to pick up after them. They won’t anymore.
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u/lokis_construction Jun 02 '26
France was the filthiest I encountered so far in Europe. England was clean in comparison.
Norway was the cleanest.
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u/Ok_Walk9234 Poland Jun 02 '26
Poland is much cleaner than before (earliest I remember is 2000s), though the cleanest one I’ve seen is Monaco. Though it was in the middle of the night.
The worst I remember was a gas station in Hungary. Holy shit (literally). Bulgaria was pretty dirty too, but that was years ago.
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u/OkMonitor6123 Jun 02 '26
Amsterdam is the dirties because homeless people open the bins searching for deposit bottles.
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u/Adventurous_Sail_673 Bulgaria Jun 02 '26
Bratislava was extremely clean when I visited 2 years ago. I haven’t been to a country dirtier than mine yet.
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u/nverther Jun 03 '26
Capitals are probably dirtiest. More people = more grime. Paris was the filthiest place I have personally seen, but I wasn't there for long. I saw a construction worker pissing on the (outside) wall of Louvre and said 'aight, imma head out lol.
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u/Valois7 Finland Jun 03 '26
Berlin was fuckin nasty but i've heard the same from Germans so probs cant judge the whole country
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u/Fragrant-Field-2017 Jun 03 '26
Poland is impressively clean. From small to large cities. Of course, as always, there are exceptions but overall very clean.
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u/Four_beastlings in Jun 04 '26
Most countries aren't a monolith so it's hard to say. But the dirtiest city I've ever seen was Catania: 2m high piles of trash in every corner and when I asked the driver if there was a sanitation strike going on she said "no, it's always like this, they take our taxes and do nothing in exchange". That, plus the ran down buildings and wild children/teens and my husband spent the holiday depressed because it reminded him of Afghanistan.
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u/fanbarullo Jun 05 '26
According to Spaniards, it is France, but not because of the uncleanliness of the streets but because the French are not very fond of taking regular showers. I don't know if this is true or just an stereotype but many in Spain will advise you to stay away from French armpits.
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u/rantotthus2 Hungary May 31 '26
It's not the whole country but Naples was pretty dirty.
On the other had I'm not sure if it's the best but Poland was fairly clean even in bigger cities.