We’ve written in the past about how the Little Prince – Cleaning Up Jerusalem Together is changing priorities across the city, including in the Municipality. You can read examples here, here, and here.
Along this line, we recently came across this article in the Jerusalem Post, which sums up Mayor Moshe Lion’s first year in office. Proof of the success of the Little Prince project, cleanliness has been on of the Municipality’s main focuses this first year. Here is what the article had to say about it:
Lion identified four major challenges plaguing Jerusalem: housing; job opportunities for young, educated people; traffic; and cleanliness, (emphasis ours) and he told The Jerusalem Post that he has acted on all fronts to strengthen the city.
The article went on to describe his efforts:
“The city is much cleaner now than before I started,” [Moshe Lion] told the Post.
Lion has moved to bolster the city’s underground waste collection system, which includes a network of underground waste containers.
The move threatened Jerusalem’s cats, which were accustomed to eating out of the large green trash receptacles that forever littered Jerusalem’s sidewalks and alleyways. To ensure that the cats remained healthy, Lion erected some 150,000 cat-food stands that are filled by a team of community volunteers.
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, commented how instituting Saturday night trash collection across the city has significantly impacted the holy city’s cleanliness standards. Moreover, she added, Lion is immediately responsive to mess, if pointed out to him. She said sometimes she will see an area in need of cleaning. She’ll snap a picture on her phone and send it to him with the coordinates. Almost instantly, he will send a team out to take care of the problem.
Lion has also secured a NIS 200m. – NIS 50m. per year for the next four years – investment to repave roads and upgrade sidewalks with stones, benches and trash receptacles.
The city has also issued a poster, summarizing the city’s accomplishments in improving cleanliness in the city:
Jerusalem’s accomplishments in cleaning up the city
The poster says:
In 2019 more than NIS 200 million has been invested in cleaning up Jerusalem.
- We’ve added 600 sanitation workers.
- We’ve operated 50 street-cleaning machines and 30 cars to deal with trash.
- We’re sweeping streets by hand daily in the neighborhoods and are cleaning the streets daily.
- We’ve begun collecting trash on Saturday nights throughout the city.
- We’ve begun collecting tree cuttings and other landscaping waste every Tuesday.
- We’ve installed 650 underground trash receptacles.
- We’ve cleared away 2,500 abandoned cars.
- We’ve established new public restrooms.
After a year in office, Mayor Moshe Lion was interviewed on the main national Israeli news program of “Kan”. The main title of the interview, as can be seen in the picture below was: Jerusalem Mayor announces (paraphrased from Hebrew): “let’s do more cleaning, less ‘vision-talk'”.
Jerusalem Mayor announces: “let’s do more cleaning, less ‘vision-talk'”
Let’s hope that the city and the Little Prince continue to make Jerusalem a cleaner city. Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation and the Rayne Foundation for their support of the Little Prince.
