With the introduction of the collection of items for recycling, things get more and more complicated. Many towns had to adapt to this system, and especially citizens had to learn how to differentiate and separate the various materials. And this already was a first step not very easy for a lot of people. Until 2006 for all the Italian municipalities it was obligatory to collect at least 35% of rubbish for recycling (in origin this percentage was to reach until 2003); the new regulation provide for the duty to reach the 65% until 2012. Municipalities that will not respect these limitations, will have to pay very expensive sanctions. While the more a municipality recycles, the less it pays. In the last years, especially thanks to this system, registered results have been very good, with the city of Torino on the top around 50% as recycling percentage and following Verona with the 36%. Some small and medium municipalities even reach the 80% as recycling percentage.



A second problem to face is the organization of the rubbish collection. Some municipalities have adopted the door to door rubbish collection, with fixed days for every type of garbage. Some others have put at every street corner the famous colored garbage bins; each color means a different type of materials. Recycling materials are organic garbage, paper, aluminum, plastic and glass.

With these new services new needs also rise, as new methods of rubbish collection or the use of new road sweepers.

The cleanliness of our city is a core theme for a lot of citizens. This does not reflect just on the garbage collection, made door to door or with the use of garbage bins. A very delicate moment is the cleaning of the city's roads and streets. Cities are more and more chaotic, more inhabited, traffic increases and consequently city are also dirtier. Every city uses its own methods and especially every area requires different methods and tools, from manual sweepers to mechanical cleaning. The activities of garbage removal and road cleaning in a specific municipality are often carried out by the same enterprise. These enterprises had to renew themselves and change their structure to be able to cope with all new needs.

Many enterprises in addition use renting cleaning machine services, to reduce costs of equipments renewal. In this field, in fact, there are several innovations that could change the life of citizens. For example, how many people find out a very expensive fine on their car, because they left the car parked on the road while there was the periodical road cleaning? To solve this problem, now new cleaning machines have been created, to clean the road with cars still parked on the road. These machines use a new technology, consisting in an arm (jointed in the big ones, fixed in the small ones) with which the operator on the ground removes, with a water and compressed-air jet, the dirt on the sidewalk and under the cars, taking it away to the middle of the road, from where it is vacuum-clean by the machine.

To love our city also means help keeping it clean, the recycling of rubbish and garbage is a fundamental moment, but not just that. Municipality also needs to make aware and involve all the citizens in improving the urban sanitation and the territory hygiene, toward ecologically virtuous habits.