City cleaning covers all responsibilities and tasks, in an urban environment, that are related to waste water processing and waste removal. Additionally niches are scavengery and snow removal. The SASE’s technical exhibition allows visitors to get a firsthand experience of the historical developments of city cleaning techniques and organizations in Germany over the last 120 years. Explanatory boards illustrate the correlations of urbanization, disease prevention and waste management. The historical exhibits are forming a dialogue with the information boards and explain the solutions to hygienic, economical and ecological problems people have been facing over time. Due to this symbiosis of city cleaning and urbanization and the related city growth, SASE has postulated the term of “urban environment protection”. The importance of such a concept gets illustrated by the fact that since 2005 the majority of humans is living in cities and developed urban environments.
The accessible depot of the SASE also hosts, besides additional garbage trucks andthe world’s largest collection of waste containers, about 20 special vehicles from sewer cleaning and road services. Maps and other exhibits convey the too often neglected importance of the work underneath street level, while roadway models highlight the different innovations that led to our modern infrastructure but also the special requirements for maintenance and cleaning.