The first public sewage plant is believed to have operated in the Silesian city of Bunzlau in 1543. The custom of lighting bonfires on summer festival days was perceived to have “the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air.”
Pigs were employed as scavengers in medieval towns. Mumford notes that “Non-edible waste was doubtless harder to dispose of: ashes, tannery offal, big bones; but certainly there was far less of this than in the modern city; for tins, iron, broken glass, bottles, and paper were scarce, or even non-existent.”
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Photo: http://prussianpoland.com/bunzlau-silesia.jpg