The Melbourne Cup is nearly upon us. Next Tuesday sees the 155th running of the richest turf race in the world. Billed as the race that stops a nation, it’s certainly the race that stops a city, with Melbourne Cup day a public holiday across Melbourne and much of Victoria.
But whatever your opinion on the event – and the occasionally excessive celebrations that come with it – there’s no denying it’s a big deal. In Victoria alone, fashion retail spending for the Melbourne Cup Carnival tops $50 million. While Australians will spend $400 million on Melbourne Cup betting this year. And it’s not just us who love it. The global audience for the big race is around 700 million.
Race Day!
Total attendance for the Carnival is around 350,000, with more than 100,000 coming through the turnstiles on Melbourne Cup day alone. Throughout the whole event, punters neck around 100,000 bottles of champagne, 400,000 bottles of beer, and 38,000 litres of tap beer (just for good measure). Racegoers last year munched their way through more than two tonnes of beef, a tonne of lamb, two tonnes of poultry and a tonne and a half of fish fillets. 10,000 rolls of toilet paper were used up as well.
That many people, consuming all that food and booze is bound to result in a bit of a mess. Around 145 tonnes of mess, in fact. Including 56 tonnes of organic waste – mostly food – and 60 tonnes of glass. But what happens to all that garbage?
The clean up
On the days off between the four race days of the Melbourne Cup Carnival, an army of cleaners armed with pinchers, bin bags, mops and brushes descend on Flemington Racecourse, working round the clock to make the venue spotless in time for the next race day. They aren’t Helpling cleaners, but then nobody’s perfect.
In the aftermath of the Cup, cleaners have found underwear, illegal drugs, hats, even false teeth! Over the week of the Carnival these cleaners will work their way through 40,000 garbage bags and use 2,000 wheelie bins. In conclusion, it’s fair to say things get messy!
So to the hundreds of cleaners tasked with this mammoth cleanup operation – we salute you! I think we’ll stick with home cleaning for now.
If your home often resembles Flemington after Melbourne Cup day, why not book house cleaning with Helpling? We might not send an army of cleaners, but we promise to get the job done properly! With prices from $29/hr, you can even start saving up for next year’s hat!
And in case you were wondering, our money’s on Trip To Paris.
