Philly Plain Dealer

On the tip of South Philadelphia, on 6th street between South and Bainbridge streets, there has been a mountainous pile of trash just sitting for almost 9 days now. Today is Thursday (4/11), which is trash pick-up day for the neighborhood. The pile has been half cleaned up and remnants remain standing.

It stinks, it isn’t pretty to look at, and makes us all look bad. 

It’s unclear how the trash pile started, but more importantly why has no one addressed it yet? On the corner of 6th and Kater street a new apartment building is almost completed, which looks like the bulk of the trash could have come from there, but there’s also school supplies, groceries and usual south street trash that had conjured up. 

Since last week, I have been steadily watching the pile grow more intensely. Philadelphia has many issues but trash and filth is one that the city is known for nationally. Who wouldn’t want that to change?  Philadelphia has many high priority issues, such as a steadily declining homicide rate, a hard to tackle open air drug market in Kensington, deep homelessness and poverty on the streets, a housing crisis and food deserts. But this is one problem around trash that is one that has gone on for too long without improvement . 

As we have reached Mayor Cherelles Parker 100th day in office, she has sworn to raise the budget to 11 million dollars for twice a week trash pick up, add more trash cans to neighborhoods , tackle illegal dumping and address loose trash in vacant land. 

“The problem with situations like these is that, we as residents have normalized ourselves to living in filth, we should be a help to the sanitation department,” said Terill Hanger, Founder of Yafavtrashman and Former Sanitation Worker.

Terill Haigler (Yafavtrashman),  was a former Sanitation worker for the city . He left in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to take his  NonProfit off the ground. He officially started on June 17th 2020.  He mission once he left working for the city was to clean up Philadelphia. Since being on his own, he has cleaned up trash for many neighborhoods and vacant spaces,  he has received high praise from city officials, received awards, gone viral and has even been on the Kelly Clarkson show. 

In my opinion, the city should fund outside organizations  such as the one Terill and his team offer.  Sanitation workers can only do so much once a week and do make errors within garbage pick ups.  Picking up trash and beautifying the city should be a priority to tackle in an ongoing effort to straighten up the city. 

The sad part about this pile is it’s just on the small end compared to other parts of the city, especially in lower income neighborhoods in Philadelphia. All over this city vacant land is just sitting with trash. This is just one small example. It sets the precedent that this is normal for our communities to be like this and carry on. 

Ultimately we as the residents hold our municipal government accountable for so much of this, but as for the general upkeep and doing our part we must assist each other for the better of our community.