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25 Dirtiest Cities in the U.S.
Ramish Cheema
9 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%.

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