25 Dirtiest Cities in the U.S.

Ramish Cheema

Tue, Jun 6, 2023, 5:58 AM9 min read

In this article:

In this piece, we will take a look at the 25 dirtiest cities in the U.S. You can skip our discussion and methodology details, head on over to 5 Dirtiest Cities in the U.S.

The growth in industrialization and the convenience of countless products have significantly improved modern day living standards. More people have sufficient calories available to them, as well as affordable clothing and other amenities that were reserved for the rich of the past. However, at the same time, simple inventions for convenience, such as plastic bags, have created problems of their own - the biggest of which is trash and pollution.

In fact, plastic bags are some of the most passively dangerous objects invented by mankind. Since they are made from artificial raw materials, they do not decompose in the environment like other organic products. Instead, a plastic bag breaks down into smaller pieces, as part of a process called photodegradation which can take as much as two decades. This process leads to the production of microplastics, which then pose a hazard to animals who eat them. While 20 years is a long time, it is by far the shortest for the degradation of the variety of commonly used items. Data from the World Wildlife Fund Inc. (WWF) shows that while a plastic bag has a degradation life of twenty years, the worst offenders are diapers, coffee pods, and toothbrushes - all of which take a stunning 500 years to meet their end.

At the same time, increasing global population and urbanization are resulting in larger amounts of trash polluting the planet as well. Estimates from the World Bank suggest that the world is set to generate more than a billion tons of additional waste by 2050 over 2018 levels. The organization's What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste Management to 2050 report shows that the world generated two billion tons of waste in 2016, and this is set to grow 70% by 2050 to sit at 3.4 billion tons. Additionally, and just as the case has been with greenhouse gas emissions, high income countries generate the highest percentage (34%) of the waste, with three North American countries - namely the U.S., Canada, and Bermuda - being the worst offenders and generating 2.21 kilograms per capita in waste daily on average and a maximum of 4.54 kg/capita/day. Adding to this, data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that the U.S. ranks lowest globally in percentage terms of plastic recycling, but high in levels of incineration.

Building on this, the growing problem of trash has also created massive economic opportunities in cleaning up American cities. Coupled with technology, this has led to smart and innovative concepts such as smart waste bins, waste level sensors in dumpsters, kiosks and bins for electronic waste, and artificial intelligence powered robots. And one city, despite the flak that it gets for high levels of pollution, is New York City. New York has one of the largest trash and sanitation departments in the world, and the city is using smart garbage bins developed by Big Belly Inc of the neighboring Massachusetts. These bins use solar power and sensors to detect whether they are full or smelly - allowing trash collectors to optimize their collection routes using these alerts. At the same, the bins have the added benefit of being free WiFi hotspots for anyone that might need them. The bins have been a success if we believe data from Big Belly. The firm, citing the example of Times Square, explains that the bins have improved waste collection by 40% and reduced the time spent in collecting the bins by 50%.

Delving deeper into the use of technology to keep the dirtiest American cities clean, other cities are tackling their trash problems through the help of robotics. One such city is Sarasota, Florida where Single Stream Recyclers (SSR) is using an AI powered robot from AMP Robotics to sort food and beverage cartons for recycling. Another city that has tested a robot for trash collection is San Francisco, where the AI powered robot called Trashbot sorts recyclable items from non recyclable ones. Finally, trash interceptors have been quite a success in Baltimore, where they have kept thousands of pounds of trash from entering the harbor.

Finally, on a larger scale, executives of Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE:WM) explained how technology is helping them optimize their waste collection during the firm's earnings call for the first quarter of 2023 where they outlined:

I don’t know that we’re hearing a lot about tech because I’m just not — I think they’re more focused on how do they keep drivers on the road. We are hearing that, and some of the companies that we’ve acquired are showing double the turnover that we’re showing. It’s why we think there’s an opportunity for us to take share — continue to take share, first, because I think the customer service product that we are providing is superior. When you are able to hold a lot of your drivers, it makes a big difference in that customer lifetime value proposition. So, we are hearing that, that turnover has become a consistent and recurring problem for a lot of those companies. I think the other thing that I would like to mention too is as we think about drivers, why it’s imperative that we bring technology to this labor pool.
It’s a shrinking labor pool. We’ve talked about it a lot. The Gen Z doesn’t want to drive trucks the way a Baby Boomer or Gen X did. So, how do we take advantage of that and the way we take advantage of it is by bringing technology to squeeze 5%, 10% maybe even 15% optimization out. And that’s exactly what we’re doing in building an optimization tool that understands absolutely the best route to take. It understands things like location of carts. We finally now know where all of our assets are. It understands the expertise of drivers. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of factors that go into a full optimization. And I guarantee there’s not anybody else out there that’s able to do that. It is not inexpensive to optimize that. But once we optimize it, then we become less reliant on labor.
And it’s a labor-intensive business, and we have 25% turnover in those driver ranks. How do I take advantage of that? And it’s got to be through technology.

Waste Management isn't among the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds, however, you can find out the best waste management stocks to buy here. With these details in mind, let's take a look at some of the dirtiest cities in the U.S.

Our Methodology

To compile our list of the dirtiest cities in America, we used data from the Census Bureau's American Housing Survey (AHS) to sift out which cities and metropolitan areas have the lowest rates of trash reported by residents. Depending on the area, the data is from 2021, 2019, or 2013. The cities are ranked by the percentage of households reporting no trash, junk, or litter on the street half a block within their residence, and the lower the percentage score, the more dirty a city is. Finally, the data is for the metropolitan areas, but details for the largest cities are provided for added context.

25 Dirtiest Cities in the U.S.

25. Dallas, Texas

Percentage of Households Reporting No Trash: 91%

Dallas is one of the dirtiest cities in Texas and ranks among the list of the top ten most populous in America.

24. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater

Percentage of Households Reporting No Trash: 90%

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area houses more than three million people and is made of three cities. Tampa is one of the dirtiest cities in Florida.

23. Phoenix, Arizona

Percentage of Households Reporting No Trash: 90%

Phoenix is the capital of, and the most populous city in Arizona with more than a million people living in its boundaries.

22. City of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Percentage of Households Reporting No Trash: 90%

The City of Oklahoma City is the capital of Oklahoma which houses two Fortune 500 companies.

21. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Percentage of Households Reporting No Trash: 89%

Pittsburgh is one of the most iconic cities in America and has a vibrant industry made of food, steel, and other industries.

20. San Antonio, Texas

Percentage of Households Reporting No Trash: 89%

San Antonio is one of the largest cities in America which a population of 1.4 million people.