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Comment by chvid | Hacker News Reader

As a Dane travelling abouts I have been stuck how clean the following three countries seemed compared to my home country: Australia, Singapore, and Japan.

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Singapore seems to have a reputation for being very clean. But being here now after Tokyo there is no comparison. The amount of litter and general cleanliness of the sidewalks are much worse here compared to Tokyo.

As a German I can assure you Denmark is far above the average in Europe in public space cleanliness :-)

As a San Francisco resident, I can say almost any major Western city is cleaner. SF is filthy, at least in the downtown areas. Every sidewalk needs a good power washing and there's poop everywhere.

Yeah...I don't much bat an eye anymore as often as I've seen someone urinating on the side of a building in a US city, but it's only SF where I regularly see someone cop a squat and take a dump on the ground. Just lucky, I guess...

Which part of Denmark? I am an Aussie living in Sweden but travel to Copenhagen every now and again and haven't noticed any mess

Copenhagen.

I would say the big difference is that in Australia (or least Brisbane where I was) laws against littering are actually enforced. And public drinking is a lot more regulated.

Anyone growing up in Australia in the 80s would remember the "Do the Right Thing" TV ads. I think they were quite effective in making littering socially unacceptable, along with the threat of a fine.

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