Trash on sidewalks and other public properties continues to be a major concern for community members. Trash that is littered, illegally dumped, or as a result of people living outside reduced livability and harms the environment. By providing funding to SOLVE, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing volunteers together to improve our environment, the City supports community members that want to join together to clean our City. By tracking the amount of trash picked up by volunteers we can measure the volunteer effort level as well as the amount of trash being removed from our community
each year.

The City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability provides important funding to SOLVE, a statewide non-profit dedicated to organizing volunteers to help our state be clean and healthy. This funding is used directly to support volunteer cleanup events throughout the City. SOLVE plays an important role in the cleanup of public properties throughout the community, supplementing work completed by the City’s Impact Reduction Program, Parks Bureau, PBOT, and Metro’s RID program. As those programs have expanded their work in recent year, SOLVE has focused their work in areas those are not reaching, with a focus on underserved communities. As shown in this chart, the amount of trash collected was reduced substantially from FY22-23 to FY23-24 and again from FY 23-24 to FY 24-25. This reduction may have been caused by a number of factors including; the amount of littering and illegal dumping taking place, increased number of public trash cans, the specifics of cleanup events such as location and volunteer participation numbers, and the efforts of other cleanup organizations in the area. The continued large amounts of trash collected demonstrate a positive impact on the amount of trash in our public spaces and continued community interest in volunteering.

SOLVE reports monthly pounds of trash collected during volunteer cleanups to BPS staff who compile that information. The pounds of trash are estimated based on the average weight of a cleanup bag and how many bags are collected, or are reported in invoices from garbage haulers.

Readers can learn more about SOLVE volunteer cleanups at the SOLVE website. Interested volunteers can sign-up to both participate in an event or lead an event, as well as suggest locations for future cleanups.