Of course street food also includes the usual suspects of big fast food chains, such as McDonald’s.

Probably the biggest downside of street food is all the litter. Fallen-off food scraps apart, there’s all the paper wrapping, the napkins, paper wrapping for the paper wrapping just because, forks made out of the cheapest splintering wood, and of course paper cups.

McDonald’s is among the food vendors enabling all the littering via »to go« packaging, and it’s in their financial interest to keep offering that service. So the least they could do, and did, is providing a garbage bin for the bus top close to their restaurant, with a lovely message encouraging proper garbage disposal:

»Klugschmeißer«

It’s a play on the German term »Klugscheißer«, which literally translates to »smartness shitter«, and means »smart-arse«. Replace Scheißer with Schmeißer (»tosser«) and you get the implication that smart people properly dispose of their garbage.

An agreeable conclusion is that the one littering their coke cup that close to a public garbage bin is indeed an idiot.

While at it: In Britain alone there are estimated numbers ranging from 858 million £^† (2016) to 660 million £^‡ (2021), with possibly even more variance depending on who and when you ask. Ask what? How much removing all the litter from public streets costs the government each year. For reference: Berlin Main Station cost about 1 billion € to build.