Don’t waste it: This is an opportunity to rethink our city’s trash collection system
The city’s trash drop-off system was flawed, but it is a process that, if tweaked, polished, and normalized, could lead us to a better way to deal with waste disposal.
For eight days, Philadelphia’s municipal strike led to unsightly and unsanitary trash piles peppered about the city, where trash had amassed around temporary dumpsters.
The work stoppage by trash collectors and other city employees, which ended Wednesday, also facilitated a surprising and much welcome consequence: In areas where dumpsters weren’t located, we saw considerably cleaner streets.
Similar to Americans in many nonurban areas, Philadelphians were expected to take their trash to designated sites. The mini mountain ranges of refuse that once lined our sidewalks, and we accepted as inevitable, disappeared.
As a result, there were no bags for trash pickers to open, for rodents to rip at, for workers to toss into trucks — sometimes missing, sometimes opening midair and leaving city blocks swirling with debris for days.
Residents at dumpster locations, however, watched their corners overflow with filth.
The city’s stopgap trash drop-off system was flawed, but it is a process that, if tweaked, polished, and normalized, could lead us to a better way to deal with waste disposal.
Long-term success would require more drop-off sites to allow most residents to access one within a quarter mile of their home. Creative visual improvements would need to be made, such as setting dumpsters behind makeshift verdant walls or hidden behind murals. Small stations for the dumpsters could be built on vacant lots.
Recycling would need to be added, and collections would surely need to be increased.
Daily collections, excluding Sundays and holidays, would limit odor. Teaching about composting and providing composting vouchers to low-income households would drastically reduce garbage and the accompanying scent. It is rotting food that creates the stench.
From a financial perspective, the city would save money.
The time, man power, and fuel costs that are needed for municipal workers to stop, one by one, at each of the city’s 750,000 homes are inefficient. We are creating waste to collect waste. The city could assign fewer collectors to designated locations, remove the trash faster, maintain cleaner streets, create fewer traffic jams, and be more economical.
The city could then afford to pay the municipal workers it employs an increased, respectable wage.
For those who are unable to bring their waste to a neighborhood collection site — the elderly, the disabled, anyone in a position of restriction — accommodations could be made through requests to have their address added to a weekly collection route.
An indirect result of this new system would be heightened civic awareness.
Big cities are collections of communities relying on individual responsibility. Rather than mindlessly tossing our trash onto the sidewalk and forgetting about it, we would be forced to each take more action, witness our neighbors doing the same, and be reminded that we thrive when we all contribute. Cleaner sidewalks with fewer rodents — many trying to enter our homes — are incentives worthy of our sacrifice.
Naysayers of this approach will argue that many people won’t be willing to adjust their habits. But with education, fines for noncompliance, and support from the right local leaders and influencers, change is possible.
The late Lou Temme, the longtime pastor of Trinity Church near Fitler Square, demonstrated this when he began a weekend recycling program in the late 1980s that drew residents from far away. At that time, a public school recycling and sanitation contest — in which I participated — awakened many of us to how easily we could adapt and change our practices.
Carrying one’s trash a few blocks isn’t ideal, but neither is cleaning up one’s sidewalk each week following collection, or walking along blocks where the trash goes ignored.
Urban planners and city officials should weigh the pros and cons of instituting neighborhood waste drop-off sites, strategizing their size and placement, their economic and environmental impact, and how long and what steps implementation would require. Pilot programs in select zip codes might yield success in one area while revealing challenges in another.
If we can learn from this experience — however messy and odoriferous it’s been — we might be able to create a cleaner, healthier, more efficient, and enjoyable city for everyone.
D.R. Hildebrand was born and raised in Philadelphia. He lives and works in Center City.