TOMORROW at 5am as you forlornly promise your god you’ll never drink again if she just spares you the miseries of a hangover, Canberra’s virtuous cleaners will be busy restoring the city from the effects of New Year revelry.

Street sweepers are first in at 5am followed by the cleaners as the team of 10 tackle the hardest day’s work of the year clearing away large volumes of litter, bottles, broken glass, vomit and other unsightly mess.

There are 45 rubbish bins and another 37 recycling bins in the city centre and they are all expected to be filled. And TAMS has provided an additional six waste and six recycling bins to help with the New Year onslaught – a total of two tonnes of rubbish and another 500 kilograms from the street sweeper and cleaning staff.

“I urge people to be mindful of their actions when celebrating tonight,” says Minister Shane Rattenbury, with a fair degree of misplaced optimism.

“Place rubbish in the bins provided and treat public assets with respect. Our staff work hard to maintain these assets to a high standard and a small amount of effort from individuals can save our staff a lot of work later.”