Nearly every time she walks out the door, Fairhill resident Teea Tynes witnesses some form of dumping. People discard a range of materials on sidewalks and vacant lots in her neighborhood, disposing of items like potato chip bags, furniture, as well as construction and demolition debris.

Tynes, who’s lived in-and-out of Fairhill since 1979, used to clean up the trash outside her home every night after work, so that her five dogs would have a “somewhat clean” place to walk. The effort required her to buy trash bags, a shovel, push brooms and manual sweepers. But no matter how much she spent and how often she cleaned, the illegal dumping continued.

“I’m spending this money trying to keep my street clean, without much help, and not getting any long-term results,” Tynes said. “It became very frustrating to me, and at one point I just stopped.”

Mayor Cherelle Parker and the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives are cracking down on illegal dumping with a new task force dedicated to investigating and penalizing offenders throughout the city.

The unit consists of 40 city staffers, including the Sanitation Department’s Streets & Walkways Education and Enforcement Program (SWEEP) officers and Park & Recreation’s park rangers, Mayor Parker and the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives announced in October. The task force was slated to begin work on Nov. 3.

Task force members have the authority to issue significant fines for illegal dumping violations. Fines have increased to $5,000 per item when a vehicle is used and $2,000 without a vehicle. The penalty system also reprimands people who hired offenders.

“We’re going to start making people pay for the amount of damages they cause in our communities by coming out and illegal dumping in our city,” Carlton Williams, director of the Office of Clean and Green Initiatives, said in an October press conference.

Task force members will be able to work with the city’s Law Department to prosecute illegal dumpers who don’t pay the fines. In the past, the Streets Department had little means to penalize offenders. But City Council passed legislation in 2022 to change the definition of short dumping to cover more offenses and allow the city to issue harsher penalties.

City officials also will rely on a network of more than 400 surveillance cameras to catch illegal dumpers. In the past, residents have criticized the cameras as ineffective due to the lack of employees overseeing the footage, but Williams said that group is now more sufficiently staffed, WHYY reported.

Maurice Sampson, who started Philadelphia’s first recycling program in the 1980s, is optimistic about the task force because it focuses on stopping the issue before it happens, rather than cleaning up the mess. The Sanitation Department spent about $1.6 million cleaning up illegally dumped items in 2024.

“I think we need to give the city a chance to see what they do,” Sampson said. “Every politician for the last 20 years has promised to do something about this problem. She’s the mayor that actually has done it.”

Tynes said she’s “extremely pleased” with the new task force. She, along with Shari Hersh and Lois Williams, lead Trash Academy, a coalition of neighborhood groups and front-line communities working to end dumping. Hersh founded the organization in 2016.

“Illegal dumping has been one of those things that’s been kicked down the road, but no one has really wanted to be bothered with it,” Tynes said. “I’m glad that Mayor Parker is taking this situation seriously and has proven that she means business.”

The task force is part of the mayor’s One Philly, A United City Cleaning Program, which aims to shed the city’s “Filthadelphia” nickname.

Philadelphia’s illegal dumping issue stems from multiple factors. Many neighborhoods with old housing lack adequate places for residents to put their trash, Tynes said. There are plenty of vacant lots, abandoned homes and other open spaces, but few cost-effective disposal options for commercial haulers. Development has led to construction and demolition waste.

“It’s not something that anyone should have to deal with. It’s offensive, and it’s an expensive problem to deal with,” Tynes said. “One of the reasons why I take it personally is because it looks bad, it smells bad, and now I’m one of those people who has had to clean it up.”

An environmental injustice

Tynes and Hersh told the Local that litter and illegal dumping are a byproduct of racial and environmental injustice. More incidents occur in marginalized communities shaped by redlining and other forms of disinvestment.

“There are a lot of unprotected spaces in marginalized communities, and dumpers know where they can go and get away with it, unwatched and unreported,” said Hersh, a Fairmount resident and Mt. Airy native.

So far, in 2025, Philadelphia’s 311 service has received 27 inquiries about illegal dumping from the 19118 zip code (Chestnut Hill), 129 from 19119 (Mt. Airy), 671 from 19144 (parts of Germantown), and 1,065 from 19140 (Huntington Park and Nicetown-Tioga).

Suzanne Ponsen, president of West Central Germantown Neighbors, said the city should allow small commercial haulers to dump at convenience centers at a reduced cost. Philadelphia’s sanitation convenience centers only accept items from residents, and private sites charge fees for construction waste and other large debris disposals.

“There should be ways for small business owners to be able to get rid of stuff, certainly at a reasonable price,” she said.

This was one of the many solutions that Trash Academy recommended to the city as a part of its Clean Philadelphia NOW campaign, which aims to end litter and illegal dumping by 2028. Other suggestions include reintroducing city bulk pickup and paying residents who clean up dumping.

Tynes said long-term solutions are necessary, as construction and demolition waste could increase under the mayor’s housing plan, which calls for creating and preserving 30,000 housing units.

“We need to get ahead of the problem, instead of waiting for it to arrive and then trying to deal with it,” Tynes said. “Some construction and demolition waste can be taken out of the waste stream and recycled and/or repurposed. So, this is another reason why we need to jump on this now.”