Dutch tourism levels continue to grow as visitors flock to Amsterdam for the plethora of clean canals and waterways, not to mention other attractions.
Yet how many of the 17+ million annual visitors to the Netherlands know about one of Amsterdam’s most influential historical figures, responsible for cleaning up the city?
Curing Amsterdam’s bad breath
Formerly known as ‘The Beauty with Bad Breath’, Amsterdam wasn’t always the clean and well-run city it is today.
In the 1800s the city’s streets were littered with excrement, domestic and street refuse, waste products from markets and abattoirs and dead animals.
Then entrepreneur, chemist and health practitioner Samuel Sarphati (1813-1866) decided enough was enough.
He was convinced that public health could be positively influenced by improving living conditions.
Sarphati arranged for the first waste- and manure-processing company to be set up to collect street refuse and process it into manure suitable for agricultural land.
Bringing together different parties, he essentially initiated one of the first public-private partnerships (PPP) to deliver waste treatment infrastructure in the city.
The video below explains how this became one of city’s first ‘Circular Economy’ and reuse projects:
