Doubling cost and vehicle emissions to collect less garbage per shift doesn’t make sense
It would be more fiscally and environmentally responsible for the city to reduce the amount of refuse it accepts, and to focus on recycling and composting.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s One Philly, United City Cleaning Program is admirable. Cleaning up Philadelphia streets is a good thing, and the pilot program to pick up residential trash twice a week in South Philadelphia and Center City at first seems like a step in the right direction.
But a closer look at this program and its potential long-term effects is warranted.
According to the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives’ brochure announcing twice-a-week trash collection, illegal dumping of residential waste in high-density neighborhoods causes negative neighborhood appearance, public health and safety concerns, decreasing property values, and increases in crime. Without enough space to store trash, the brochure claims, residents of South Philadelphia and Center City are forced to dump their waste illegally throughout the week.
Citing an annual cost of $1.5 million for cleaning illegal dumping, this certainly seems like a worthy cause — but not all dumping is created equal.
Through this effort, the city has amplified the impact of residential illegal dumping and ignored what residents and organizations such as Clean Philadelphia Now have long said: illegal dumping of construction and demolition waste is the true blight on the city.
Data from the “Zero Waste and Litter Cabinet’s 2019 Litter Index Report” show a high prevalence of 311 reports of illegal dumping in the pilot areas. However, comparing 311 reports and actual on-the-ground cleanliness scores shows that “the number of illegal dumping requests is disproportionately higher than the degree of litteredness based on the Litter Index.”
Put another way, these densely populated areas receive more 311 complaints, but aren’t as littered compared with other neighborhoods.
Philadelphians need not strain themselves to guess which areas of the city are actually more littered and more often subject to the types of dumping that run up the city’s abatement bills. “Legacy dumpsites” in North, West, and Southwest Philadelphia and the city’s approximately 40,000 vacant lots are the true drivers of abatement costs.
The city needs to continue strengthening its efforts to catch bad actors dumping construction and demolition debris in the city’s most marginalized communities.
Parker helped address illegal dumping when she was on City Council, and the city has seen success in requiring contractors to prove legal disposal of waste. But Department of Licenses and Inspections vacancies make enforcement almost impossible. Surveilling legacy dumpsites, investigating dumping, and prosecuting illegal dumpers should continue and be expanded.
As Circular Philadelphia has laid out, expanding access to legal dumping sites needs to be part of the solution, too. City transfer stations currently charge $100 per ton or less of material, making it very costly for small-time haulers to dispose of their waste. Lowering the tipping fee and expanding hours at these locations would provide a legal and affordable alternative to illegal dumping.
Even if illegal dumping in South Philadelphia and Center City is a huge driver of abatement costs for the city, doubling collections is not a sustainable solution. EPA research shows that doubling collections is highly inefficient, with second-day pickups being underutilized.
Doubling cost and vehicle emissions to collect less garbage per shift not only doesn’t make sense fiscally nor environmentally, but it also sets a precedent of disposal that is unsustainable.
Garbage researcher Lily Pollens explains in her book, Resisting Garbage: The Politics of Waste Management in American Cities, that when cities expand their infrastructure to merely remove refuse, they do so at the expense of long-term sustainability. By removing it from Philadelphian’s view faster, there’s little incentive to reduce waste, as it simply disappears sooner.
Cities like Seattle that achieve high levels of recycling and composting have done so by reducing the amount of refuse they accept, not doubling it.
If Philadelphia truly wants to be the “safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation,” then it must follow through on its Zero Waste commitments and expand capacity that aligns with those goals — rather than entrenching a system of endless waste production and removal.
Waste characterizations reveal over 30% of the waste generated by residents in Philadelphia is compostable. If the city is going to run another day of pickups, it should invest in a sustainable composting program that can reduce the city’s overall disposal costs.
Adam Bailey is an urban planner, a graduate of Philadelphia’s Citizens Planning Institute, and a former employee of New York City’s Department of Sanitation.