Reworking the Littered Landscape: Trash, Labor, and Space in Philadelphia

Keywords: litter, urban geography, labor, care, environmental justice, trash
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

The uneven proliferation of litter across Philadelphia’s landscape is a visual, tangible, and frequently foul-smelling symbol of the sharp inequality which structures urban life. Often referred to as “Filthadelphia,” Philadelphia is one of the poorest major American cities and only city of its size with no comprehensive street cleaning program. In the absence of equitable municipal services, private interests, non-profit organizations, and grassroots organizers rally diverse forms of unpaid and underpaid work to clean commercial corridors, residential blocks, and public parks across the city. In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research conducted with anti-litter workers between 2019 and 2022 to argue that the difficult embodied labor of cleaning is used as both a public performance of care and a mode of punishment. I focus on the Ray of Hope Project, a grassroots group run by one man, Raymond Gant, who founded the organization after a long period of incarceration. I frame the Project’s physical acts of litter removal as performances of care, arguing that as the all-volunteer group engages in clean-ups, they create new uses of space – by making micro-geographies of curbs and sidewalks newly accessible, for example – which, in turn, encourage new ways of seeing the landscape. As this paper tracks the organization’s history and practices, it illuminates the complex relationship between punishment and care in public space, as the Project replicates and reimagines anti-litter labor modeled by court-ordered community service.