The impact of the DC 33 strike depended on where you live, forcing Philadelphians to get creative with their trash management

Franklinville resident Maria Garay had no idea how her groceries were going to fit in her fridge that was increasingly full of garbage.

Before Philadelphia’s municipal sanitation workers came to a deal with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker in the wee hours of Wednesday morning in their second week on strike, the 47-year-old was putting her food scraps in the freezer. She doesn’t have a caged, wrought-iron porch like some of her neighbors, which is where some started to pile their trash, or a car. But Garay refused to let food fester in the humidity and heat.

Even if she wanted to, she could not afford to pay someone to take her trash to the closest temporary dump site, more than half a mile away, so she neatly lined up her trash in the far corner of the abandoned lot next to her home.

“The neighborhood already has rats,” she said. “I just gotta deal with it.”

Garay was far from the only one with trash troubles.

About 950,000 of Philadelphia’s 1.57 million residents lived more than a half-mile from the nearest trash drop-off site, according to an Inquirer analysis. In a city where U.S. Census data say 29% of households do not have access to a car, a 10- to 15-minute walk to a dumpster with rancid, leaky trash could feel insurmountable.

Residents had to get creative with their trash maintenance as the 9,000-member District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees negiotated with Parker.

Many residents blamed the lack of accessible dumpsters.

South Philly resident Linda Campbell, 73, lives about three-quarters of a mile from what was the nearest dumpster on Washington Avenue, and her block was feeling the strain.

“It’s murder, we’re just piling it up,” said Campbell, pointing to how neighbors had just stacked their bags on their porches, next to rocking chairs and children’s play sets. “Without a car, you’re done.”

Pest-control experts say residents were right to be concerned about garbage being a breeding ground for flies and mosquitoes, which can multiply within a week’s time in the hot summer months.

They also warn that rodents are likely to linger even now that the strike is over.

Able-bodied residents looking to keep pests away have hauled their trash by grocery cart, SEPTA, and, in one instance this weekend, a rolling office chair. Campbell enlisted her daughter-in-law to help.

Parts of Torresdale in the Far Northeast are more than a mile from a sanitation convenience center or one of the 60 temporary drop-off sites set up by the city. Residents there said they could use their yards for temporary storage and reported some relief in homes being spread out.

“The rowhouses are dealing with it worse of all,” said Martin McNamee, 80, adding that despite being far from a temporary drop-off site, neighbors could find a way to dispose of their trash if need be. “Everybody has a car and people here help out those who are incapacitated.”

Yet while some residents wished they had temporary dumpsters closer to them, others wished they were further away.

As workers in neon shirts cleared a temporary drop-off site in the Bustleton section of the city Friday, a bottleneck formed with cars waiting to add their trunk-loads of garbage to what is usually a median.

“Seems like people are doing spring cleaning, the entire zip code’s trash is in my backyard,” said one resident who lives in one of the tony homes across the road.

Tykedia Harris, 45, put it more bluntly.

“It stinks!” she said of the drop-off site at 52nd Street and Overbrook Avenue in West Philadelphia. The bulging dumpster is right near her job at the Aftercare Evening Reporting Center, the home of a Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Services Center probation program.

Harris said that the dumpster had filled up over the holiday weekend, alongside dozens of bags on the street that never made it inside its red metal walls.

Residents living next to the dumpsters placed on the western edge of Marconi Plaza in South Philadelphia echoed her sentiment, adding that opportunists were making an unpleasant situation worse, using the metal bins to dump construction materials and electronics.

Bad actors had also come to the attention of the city, which vowed to punish those tossing illegal trash at the dumpsters. At a news conference Monday at Marconi Plaza, Carlton Williams, director of the Philadelphia Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, reminded the public that the dumpsters are for residential trash only and that people should not leave their rubbish on the sidewalk next to them.

“Do not place trash outside of these dumpsters,” Williams said. “It causes a condition and slows us down in the collection process.”

Williams said one person was arrested over the weekend in Logan for tossing rotten chicken and “unused oil” and faces a fine of up to $5,000 per incident.

Before the strike concluded, residents were doing their best to manage their trash while navigating transportation limitations and reservations about the temporary trash sites, whether out of consideration for the people who live next to dumpsters or to avoid doing anything that could be perceived as crossing a picket line.

Harris said her workplace kept its trash in its normal bins and some overflow in the backyard, but that was just a temporary plan.

“I don’t know how long we can hold this trash over here,” she said. “There’s no telling how bad the city is gonna smell.”

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the city and DC 33 gave her, and the rest of Philadelphia, some relief.