What Is Sweeping?

Street sweeping is an essential part of protecting the environment. Sweeping has become a common practice in many cities and towns to help keep our waterways clean. Basically, street sweeping is the process of removing dirt, chemicals and debris from the street. Street sweepers are vehicles that have sprayers, brushes and vacuums on them that are used for sweeping the street and other paved surfaces such as driveways and parking lots.

Sweeping Helps The Environment?

Street sweeping is a type of storm water management that helps remove dirt and debris from streets, sidewalks, parking lots and other hard surfaces. Accordingly, street sweepers are used to clean up pollutants that get washed into storm drains by rain or snowmelt. This debris can include litter, spilled oil and grease, sand, leaves and other organic matter like grass clippings. Street sweeping is a very important part of keeping our environment clean. Without street sweeping, stormwater would be able to flow into our waterways and cause a potential environmental issue. The EPA estimates that street sweeping removes over two million pounds of materials from our nation’s streets every day. This includes about 1 million pounds of litter each year!

Street sweepers help remove these pollutants before they find their way into storm drains. Sweepers help to prevent contaminants from entering waterways through storm drains. Stormwater can carry all kinds of pollutants into rivers, lakes, streams and other bodies of water which can potentially contaminate waterways with bacteria and other harmful substances like oils, heavy metals or pesticides. For more information, contact Atlantic Sweeping today!