Does Twice-Weekly Trash Solve Philly’s Litter Problem

image above – Open recycling bins sit on a Northern Liberties corner on Friday, April 24, 2026, at 10 p.m. Recyclables are scheduled to be picked up on Friday mornings.

Since 2024, Philadelphia has been trying something new to combat its infamous trash problem. In a city known for littered streets and smelly sidewalks, Philadelphians have long complained about the household waste that decorates roadways and decays in front of stoops.

As part of her “Clean and Green” push to beautify the city, Mayor Cherelle Parker implemented twice-weekly trash pickup in select southern corridors of the city in December 2024. In 2025 and 2026, the City expanded the twice-weekly pickup services, bringing them to North Philadelphia and Center City (including Northern Liberties) in January 2026. In partnership with the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, the Department of Sanitation added an additional residential trash pickup day each week to supplement the main pickup day. Instead of setting out trash and recycling once a week, residents are encouraged to use the second day to dispose of additional trash. Recycling is not picked up on the supplemental pickup day.

The pickup program expansion came after a summer of contract negotiations between Parker and DC 33, the AFSCME union chapter that represents local sanitation workers. During a general strike that lasted 20 days, trash pickup was halted and garbage became an even more visible problem on roadways. Ultimately, the union settled with the City and  ended up with just a fourteen percent pay raise instead of the thirty-two percent they wanted. “The union lost that fight,” said Terrill Haigler. Terrill is a native Philadelphian, former city sanitation worker, and community activist who talks about Philly’s trash on his Instagram page “Ya Fav Trash Man.”

What Causes the Trash?

The cause of Philadelphia’s litter problem is a source of disagreement among residents. Many residents point to careless littering, while others blame a lack of city services. The City sees it as a public service issue: too much household trash and infrequent municipal pickups. According to the Office of Clean and Green, the twice-weekly program is intended to “relieve the burden of storing trash inside homes,” which Director Carlton Williams asserts will lead to less illegal dumping and improve the cleanliness of city streets.

But is illegal dumping of excess household trash the cause of litter in Philadelphia? Matt Ruben, past President of the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association and a resident of the neighborhood for more than twenty-five years, points to a different reason for the litter: “There’s a rampant problem of people not putting recycling out properly. And a lot of the so-called trash that blows around or ends up strewn up and down the streets is not actually garbage,” says Ruben. “It’s actually recycling.”

In Philadelphia, recycling is to be set out on the curb in a municipal recycling bin and is not permitted to be placed in bags. Free recycling bins can be picked up at any of the city’s six “sanitation convenience centers.” City recycling bins are small blue bins without lids. On windy days or if pickup is delayed, recyclables from the open bins are prone to blowing around city streets. As Ruben points out, “The twice-weekly trash pickup is not addressing that problem.”

Other Philadelphians see the street litter as an infrastructure gap that is not captured by the City’s beautification efforts. Morgan Berman, a lifelong resident of the Philadelphia area, founded Glitter, a company that allows neighborhood blocks to fund and contract private street cleaners to reduce waste in the perceived absence of city services. Berman feels that the twice-weekly schedule addresses the wrong issues. “We are actually incentivizing the wrong behavior with twice-a-week trash pickup. We’re incentivizing using the free thing, which is already not working well, and we’re not incentivizing using things like recycling and composting,” says Berman.

Terrill, “Ya Fav Trash Man,” says the trash is “a culture thing,” caused by disinvestment by leaders who decided that Philadelphia’s trash problem wasn’t worth investing in. Terrill began his career as a full-time sanitation worker in 2019, making just $29,000 annually.

Philadelphia’s twice-weekly trash pickup program requires a level of resident participation and correct usage that may not be happening, and it assumes a universal level of trash production across neighborhoods. When asked if he participates, Ruben explained that he does not. He and his wife do not generate enough household waste to need a second pickup day. Ruben also points out that there are differing levels of trash across Philadelphia neighborhoods, but he doesn’t think somewhere like Northern Liberties has enough excess household trash to justify multiple weekly pickups. And as Haigler points out, not everyone has the knowledge about proper trash disposal or the privilege to even worry about it in a low-income city like Philadelphia, where residents might be trying to keep the lights on at home.

Neighbors hang a homemade sign about residential trash management at Second and Fairmount.

The Cost of Twice-Weekly Pickup

Mayor Parker’s Five-Year Plan includes  $867.4 million for Clean and Green Initiatives from FY27-32, including $84 million for sanitation ($70 million of which is earmarked for vehicles and compactors). The department’s annual budget is also proposed to increase to approximately $129 million in FY31 (up from $122 million in FY25), with $120 million of the total allocated to salaries. This program, like most of the city’s programs, is funded by the Philadelphia City Wage Tax, which in 2024 netted the city more than $2.5 billion.

It is unclear whether the program includes expanding twice-weekly pickup to all areas of the city or how much more that would cost the department.

Is the New Schedule Working?

Is twice-weekly pickup cleaning up Philly’s streets? The Parker administration says it is, writing in the recent five-year plan that the city’s Litter Index Score has decreased 11% in the last year. The Litter Index is a scoring system applied to data collected by Streets Department employees.

A chart from The City of Philadelphia’s Five Year Plan outlines reported litter volume from FY24–26.

This data is not independently verifiable, as the City has not published information on methodology or full Litter Index Reports since 2019.
Philly collects complaints and service requests from residents and compiles the contact data into monthly reports through its 311 line. In February 2026, 311 received 23,769 contacts for the Streets Department out of 32,582 total contacts. “Rubbish collection” was the most common type of complaint, with 6,575 contacts. Other trash-related contacts included thousands of calls about “short dumping,” “recyclables pickup,” and “illegal dumping.” Residents also contacted the city 4,725 times to ask which day their trash would be picked up. In February 2022 (the only other February report available and from before twice-weekly pickup was enacted), the city received 1,409 contacts about “rubbish collection” out of a total of 22,392 reports. Although this data does not tell the whole story of litter in Philadelphia over time, it does not seem to indicate that Philadelphians are seeing less trash when they walk outside, due to the new schedule or otherwise.

On the topic of the new program, Philly residents said the streets are no cleaner with twice-weekly pickup. Berman, founder of an independent cleanup company, reported that since the new schedule began, she has heard anecdotally that her street cleaners have more litter to pick up. Both Ruben and Haigler said that late pickups are an ongoing problem, which means that if the sanitation workers are running behind, trash sits out for longer and twice a week. If twice-weekly pickup is leading residents to set trash out more often, with the same errors as before, more trash may be blown into the street and litter may be increasing.

Philadelphia is not the only city to implement twice-weekly pickups. Several other cities have adopted enhanced collection schedules, including Tampa, Florida, which celebrates the creation of “residential service days” that provide reliable scheduling. This garbage-reducing solution may not be feasible for every city. First, it requires a labor force, infrastructure, and funding not necessarily available in every area. Second, cities must be able to dispose of the amount of trash picked up municipally. Philadelphia is currently assessing its own disposal program, incinerating trash in Chester, Pennsylvania, which has been described as a form of environmental racism.

Though other cities have adopted twice-weekly pickup, there are also many cities that provide once-weekly garbage pickup, but do not see the amount of street litter we see in Philadelphia. OxiFresh produced a study ranking cities based on their cleanliness. Among the cities with the least litter are locales like Raleigh, NC and Atlanta, Georgia. What makes those cities different? Raleigh has an interactive map of street service, and Atlanta just implemented a new street sweeping schedule.

As for Philadelphia? Keep your eyes open as Mayor Parker continues to expand the twice-weekly trash pickup program. And maybe consider putting a lid on your recycling bin.