Street Sweeping During the Coronavirus Pandemic
In the best of times no one thinks much about street sweeping. That’s just the way the sweeping industry likes it even though we know we would get a lot more love if folks knew about all the benefits to your property, the environment and also your health.
As in the past, street and parking lot sweeping are exempt from the business lockdowns on several fronts as it’s considered an essential sanitation service, a public works and even solid waste removal.
Our unique status was also evident during the 1973 OAPEC oil embargo as well as the 1979 oil crisis, when police vehicles, fire equipment, trash trucks and sweepers were on the shortlist to get emergency fuel so they could keep working.
In our current crisis, street sweepers can easily continue to do their work with plenty of social distancing. However, we still love getting a friendly wave from the citizens we serve.
With the kids out of school and parents working from home, we are seeing a significant increase in family walks, biking and kids playing in their driveways. This is where quality private community street sweeping has seen and unseen benefits. Sweepers remove heavy metals, brake dust, asphalt fines and particulates down to 2.5 microns. Keeping this out of our lungs and stormwater runoff is what we do every day.
Street sweepers also remove a surprising number of hypodermic needles, pet waste, dead rodents, rotting vegetation and some other gross stuff our kids don’t need to see. Peloton Sweeping specializes in high-end private communities and we see these things in all of the neighborhoods we service.
More recent items we’ve been sweeping up are disposable masks, wet wipes and gloves. It’s hard to imagine why some folks think tossing these on the ground is the right thing to do.
Most communities have stopped ticketing on sweeping day, but confirm this for your area. Better yet, help us keep the streets clean by parking off the street when you can. We are all spending more time at home, so having a clean street makes being home a little nicer.
