Berlin’s trash problem has reached a tipping point. As the city grapples with overflowing bins, littered parks and streets that look more like dumping grounds than public spaces, Berliners’ frustration with the garbage situation is becoming an increasingly frequent topic of complaint. Meanwhile, officials are throwing money at awareness campaigns – while volunteers armed with trash bags are doing the actual cleaning.
I don’t think what they are doing is working at all. I think they are unable to keep our city clean.
This summer, the Berliner Stadtreinigung (BSR) launched a €170,000 poster campaign with the slogan “Sauber geht nur gemeinsam” (“clean is only possible together”), telling residents that “everyone is needed to keep Berlin clean”. At the unveiling of this new initiation, Environment Senator Ute Bonde of the CDU proclaimed that “we can only achieve a liveable and clean city together”. The campaign, featuring dancing french fry containers, dog-poop bags and cigarette butts plastered on Berlin trash bins, will run until autumn.
But for Valeriia Tantcyreva, a 30-year-old Russian immigrant who started the grassroots cleanup initiative ‘Sauber’ six months ago, the campaign feels like a slap in the face. “I don’t think what they are doing is working at all. I think they are unable to keep our city clean. There’s a very good word from TikTok – it’s called ‘delulu’ – and I think they are fucking delulu,” she says bluntly about the awareness approach. Tantcyreva’s frustration stems from months of leading her own cleanup efforts, which have collected hundreds of bags of garbage across Berlin’s most problematic areas. She reached out to the BSR to “work together, not against each other”, saying “I wanted recognition – like, can you please see us, see me, because we are doing a lot of things.”
Online, her fellow Berliners are also looking for ways to take the situation into their own hands. On a Reddit thread in August, commenters swapped suggestions for some of the city’s dirtiest spots to tackle, among them S-Bornholmer Strasse, Gesundbrunnen and Brunnenplatz. “The reality is that the parks are not cleaned regularly enough, and so wrappers/fast-food stuff/garbage builds up fast,” said one local. Another chimed in, “It’s not like the BSR doesn’t know, but resources are not allocated. Not strange this happens in low-income areas.”
GRITTY CITY
Tantcyreva’s journey into Berlin’s trash troubles began this past New Year’s, when the aftermath of celebrations left her Prenzlauer Berg neighbourhood buried in debris. “When I first came here I thought that all the trash was, like, part of the vibe: without trash Berlin will be not Berlin,” she recalls. It’s a common refrain in the city, that its slightly gritty nature is part of its charm. But after walking past rotting garbage for days, Tantcyreva reached her breaking point. “I bought [a litter picker] for €6. And I went on the street, recorded a short video like: ‘Look at me, I’m tired of this shit and I’m gonna do something!’” The TikTok went viral, generating around 1,000 replies from followers wanting to help.
Her first cleanup was a reality check. What she thought would take “a couple of hours” for a small area by the Greifswalder Straße S-Bahn entrance took six. “Six fucking bags,” she remembers. “I was so tired. I even cried in the end. It was so terrible.” But during that cleanup, a stranger approached offering help, telling Tantcyreva, “Wait for me [for] 10 minutes.” They ran home to get supplies, then returned to help her pick up dirty plastic wrappers, stray needles, clothing scraps, cigarette butts and the occasional dead animal. They told Tantcyreva, “It’s so nice that you started it, because I was so ashamed and afraid to do it alone.”
Tantcyreva, who on her social media says she never expected when moving to Berlin that she’d be the one cleaning it up, began organising meetups every two weeks and posting about them. What started as one woman’s frustration has grown into a movement, with over 12,000 Russian- and English-speaking volunteers coordinating in WhatsApp groups. Their most ambitious cleanup collected 207 bags worth of trash from around the Hallesches Tor U-bahn station in a single day, a feat she posted to TikTok. The Berliners in her comments are on her side: some ask to join, some ask to donate money, other for signage that makes passersby aware that the newly junk-free areas they’re walking by were cleaned by everyday residents. “What a great job you did!” wrote one follower in July. “But this is ridiculous that citizens have to clean the centre of the capital city by their own hands.”
Berlin’s draft budget for 2026-2027 shows the city is finally putting some money where its mouth is. The budget allocates significant increases to the sanitation service: from €152 million this year to €173 million in 2026 and €179 million in 2027. The additional funding will enable BSR to take on new responsibilities, including cleaning green spaces and playgrounds, and cover rising operating costs. However, there are barriers to the impact of this money. The funds won’t cover new vehicles or additional staff, according to city officials. This limitation becomes starkly apparent when volunteers regularly encounter situations that official services seem unable or unwilling to address. Sauber regularly tackles areas that reveal the depth of Berlin’s sanitation crisis, like near U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations and the edges of public parks. At some cleanups, volunteers encounter “dead animals… rats and real human shit”.
When asked how she’d spend the city’s increased budget, Tantcyreva has a practical wish list: “If they will give me money, I will start with public toilets. The second thing I will do is a lot of… boxes to organise zu verschenken… because in Berlin it’s very popular to trade things,” she says. “And the third thing, of course, is bigger bins, so they’re not overflowing.”
COMING CLEAN
Sauber is not the only grassroots organisation attempting to keep Berlin clean at the hands of humble residents; local group Litter Pickers Berlin also meets frequently (in their case, twice a month) to clean the city’s grossest crevices, and has done so since 2023. But the rise of such efforts also raises a deeper question: whose responsibility is it to keep Berlin’s streets clean? While many praise these volunteer-led initiatives as admirable acts of civic engagement, others worry they may inadvertently absolve city agencies of accountability. Should citizens be celebrated for stepping in – or should their energy be redirected toward demanding systemic solutions?
Most telling for Tantcyreva is the demographic breakdown of who actually shows up to clean. “I would say like 1% of people who come to our cleanups are German. All other people, they’re immigrants… who can be here for one to two years or 20 years, but they’re still immigrants.” says Tantcyreva. This stands in stark contrast to online commentary. Tantcyreva points to her Instagram comments: “There are so many comments from German people… They’re like, oh, it’s all because of immigrants who came here – it’s Ukrainians, it’s Arab people, it’s everyone but Germans. It’s never German people’s fault… They’re just like, we will blame everyone but not ourselves.”
The irony isn’t lost on her: according to Tantcyreva, while German taxpayers complain about the trash problem online and blame immigrants for it, it’s primarily the city’s international transplants who volunteer their weekends to actually clean up the mess. To those who say they shouldn’t have to clean because they already pay taxes, Tantcyreva takes a hard stance. “If you see that your government can’t do it, then go and fucking help,” she says. “If you show Berlin that people like me, like you, will clean the streets because BSR are unable to do it, then we will highlight the problem.”
The BSR does provide supplies for registered cleanups – free trash bags, vests, and gloves. But Tantcyreva wanted more substantial collaboration from the city’s sanitation service, including help with transport. In July, she finally secured a meeting with local BSR leadership. After presenting statistics about her group’s impact, officials were enthusiastic and promised support. But despite big promises at the meeting, little came of it – though on her TikTok, Tantcyreva acknowledges that the BSR has helped them clear away the dozens of bags they’ve collected during cleanups. But she still feels that the dirtiest part of cleaning up the city, the days spent digging through Berlin’s most repulsive refuse, has fallen to its citizens.
I would say like 1% of people who come to our cleanups are German. All other people, they’re immigrants
Tantcyreva is realistic about the limitations of volunteer cleanup efforts. “I understand very clearly when people tell me, ‘You are not solving the problem. I’m like, ‘Bitch, thank you, I know.’ It’s like if somebody has cancer and they cough up blood – what I’m doing [is] like wiping the blood,” she says. “We will never solve the problem only with cleanups.” But the city’s approach to its mounting trash situation reveals a fundamental disconnect between policy and practice. On one side, officials allocate millions in budget increases and launch expensive awareness campaigns. On the other, internationals and native residents alike roll up their sleeves every weekend, collecting what the municipal system failed to prevent or remove.
Whether Berlin’s increased budget and awareness campaigns will translate into meaningful change remains to be seen. What’s certain is that volunteers like Tantcyreva will continue showing up with trash bags and gloves, doing the unglamorous work that makes the city a little nicer, one black bag at a time. Ultimately, Tantcyreva’s motivation is simple: “I just want to live in a better place.”
