Street sweeper (profession)

A street sweeper or street cleaner,  generically, is a municipal employee,  of a private company,  dedicated to sweeping the streets and gardens, collecting papers, fallen leaves, cleaning graffiti, etc. in order to keep the streets and public spaces clean.

 Activity 
The street sweeper's work includes two distinct types of activity: manual cleaning, using a broom, dustpan and trolley, especially in pedestrian areas, sidewalks and parks, and mechanical cleaning, using motorized sweepers, leaf blowers and brigade vehicles that cover large areas and transport light waste. These tasks are carried out regularly and in a coordinated manner, and may include the removal of fallen leaves, dust, sand, small urban waste and plant debris. 

 Characteristics 
Due to the nature of their work, street sweepers are exposed to traffic and weather conditions, so specific protective clothing such as gloves, safety footwear and high visibility vest is mandatory.  Among the duties of the street sweeper may also be the removal of solid urban waste.  

 Denomination 
Despite the fact that the occupation of street sweeper constitutes an essential and necessary task for the normal functioning of communities,  the very characteristics of the profession and the low qualifications  required for its performance have generated a certain stigmatization of the group.  For this reason, social institutions have adopted aseptic or euphemistic names  in an attempt to correct the affront by replacing the term street sweeper with periphrases such as "Municipal cleaning worker", "Street cleaning operator",   "Public space cleaner",  "Street cleaning specialist",  even going so far as to develop more bombastic ones such as "urban hygienists". 

 Street sweepers "in the movies" 

 Laurel and Hardy star in the 1940 film A Chump at Oxford . Stan and Ollie are two street sweepers who, while taking a lunch break outside a bank, accidentally thwart a robber's escape.
 The Three Stooges play, in the 1941 short film So Long Mr. Chumps, three street sweepers who, while on the job, find some loot and search for its owner to return it.
 In 1967 , José Luis López Vázquez played the protagonist of A Million in the Trash, a street sweeper who finds a million pesetas in a trash can.
 Mario Moreno stars in El barrendero, a 1981 film, in which he plays a street sweeper who witnesses the theft of a painting that the thieves hide in a garbage can.

 Gallery 

 See also 

 Leaf blower

 References 

Category:Occupations