One of Cleanzine’s many valued readers ‘across the pond’ sent me the link to an article in The Philadelphia Citizen a couple of weeks back, which I found really interesting. Headed up: ‘Did Mayor Parker get cleaning basics wrong?’ (https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/did-mayor-parker-get-cleaning-basicswrong/) it featured a constructive analysis by Nicolas Esposito, the City's former Zero Waste & Litter Director, on the Mayor's proposed ‘cleaning & greening’ plan, which he feels falls short of what Philadelphia really needs. He says that the Mayor’s massively hiked budget of $250 million over the next five years is geared far too heavily towards preventing litter and illegal dumping… i.e. it’s reactive rather than proactive – and although I’m not party to the history of the issues Philadelphia has faced, they seem very much on par with what’s been going on in the UK. And, like Nicolas, I feel that an alternative approach is long overdue, since things are getting worse over time, rather than improving. 

  

Nicolas refers to the 2019 study: ‘The Cost of Litter and Illegal Dumping in Pennsylvania: A Study of Nine Cities Across the Commonwealth’ (https://www.keeppabeautiful.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KPB-Litter-Cost-Study-013120.pdf), put together when he worked for Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. He believes that the data collection involved in compiling the report, was the first time Philadelphia had fully considered how much it was spending to combat litter and illegal dumping across every department in the City, rather than just the ‘Streets Department’ - approximately $48 million per year to clean up litter and illegal dumping, which equated to about $32 per resident. He compared that to the $20 spent per resident in Pittsburgh - a ‘remarkably cleaner’ city, and says that this is down to the Pittsburgh being proactive and spending 45% of its ‘illegal dumping’ budget on litter prevention and education compared to Philadelphia’s 8%. 

  

“A cleaner city is one that invests in waste and litter prevention rather than repeated remediation,” he says, reminding readers of the well-researched fact that the more you just clean up illegal dump sites, the more people will dump there because they know that someone’s going to come along and clean it up. A perfect example of wallpapering over the cracks. So why are we still doing it? And doing it more? 

  

The 2019 study makes interesting reading – as does the article which goes on to suggest several ways to properly combat the problems. They echo what I’ve said in the past about the need to make it easier for people and businesses to recycle – rather than harder, as seems to be happening currently.  Education from a young age about the need to be responsible for our own litter, (like I had as a child!) is also crucially important; we need to change the mindset…