A street sweeper or street cleaner is a person or machine that cleans streets.

People have worked in cities as "sanitation workers" since sanitation and waste removal became a priority. A street-sweeping person would use a broom and shovel to clean off litter, animal waste and filth that accumulated on streets. Later, water hoses were used to wash the streets.

Street sweepers as machines were created in the 19th century to do the job easier. Today, modern street sweepers are mounted on truck bodies and can vacuum debris that accumulates in streets.

The need for rubbish to be removed from roads in built-up areas has existed for centuries.

Sometimes a local law in a town or city ordered the owner or occupier of each address to clean the length of that road that passed his address.

Sometimes when much traffic was horse-drawn vehicles or ridden horses, there were street cleaners who selectively removed horse droppings because of their value as fertilizer on nearby rural areas.

By the 1840s, Manchester, England, had become known as the first industrial city. Manchester had one of the largest textile industries of that time. As a result, the robust metropolis was said to be England's unhealthiest place to live. In response to this unsanitary environment, Joseph Whitworth invented the mechanical street sweeper. The street sweeper was designed with the primary objective to remove rubbish from streets in order to maintain aesthetic goals and safety.

The very first street sweeping machine was patented in 1849 by its inventor, C.S. Bishop. For a long time, street sweepers were just rotating disks covered with wire bristles. These rotating disks served as mechanical brooms that swept the dirt on the streets.