Seattle Public Utilities is out with its 2024 “Clean City” report as it says citizens are volunteering more effort than ever to community clean-ups while its totals for debris collected from the public right of way actually dropped during the year.

“I’m proud we’re doing this work. Keeping Seattle neighborhoods cleaner helps residents thrive,” SPU General Manager and CEO Andrew Lee said in the announcement. “We welcome more residents and community organizations to join us in supporting Seattle’s diverse communities.”

SPU says its crews removed 1,765,421 pounds of debris from 1,550 blocks across the city’s right-of-way in 2024, down 7% from 2023 despite continued increased use of the Find It, Fix It “Service Request Mobile App.”

SPU credits “community engagement and education, enforcement efforts, and collaboration with other City of Seattle departments” for the reduction.

The Find It, Fix It app is focused on issues around cleanliness and rubbish but stats from the show that a bulk of the system’s calls are related to homelessness even though the app’s categories don’t show choices like “encampment” or “tents.” Instead, the calls are frequently reported under general inquiries, or “illegal dumping,” the most frequently used category in Find It, Fix It complaints.

In addition to the service calls, SPU says it cleaned the right of way along “48 proactive routes” as well as conducting 634 “Geo Cleans, collecting 407,489 total pounds of trash and debris from RV sites along the right of way.” A separate RV-focused effort resulted in an additional 107 callouts collecting more than 580,000 more pounds of trash and debris collected.

SPU crews are getting a boost from volunteers. The city says Mayor Bruce Harrell’s One Seattle initiatives have helped drive more than a $1 million worth of volunteer hours cleaning up the city.

CHS reported here on other, smaller, but longer lasting efforts like the Caring for Capitol Hill group organizing neighborhood clean-ups around Cal Anderson Park. Others like Seattle Street Fixers are also trying to pick up what the city doesn’t get to.

SPU’s report also includes its work to provide and maintain city trash and recycling cans. SPU says it maintains 1,145 public litter and recycling cans across Seattle, in partnership with
Waste Management and Recology. “Service levels vary between 3 to 14 times per week, depending on location needs,” SPU says.

SPU says improved cans are also helping. “In 2024, we upgraded 100 older-style cans to key-locked cart-garage cans (standard graphics photo) in the neighborhoods of Belltown, Hillman City, First Hill, Greenwood/Phinney Ridge, and Magnolia. These new cans helped improve collection efficiency by addressing issues such as overflows, illegal dumping, and
scattered litter. Additionally, the key-locked cans installed in 2023 in the Chinatown-International District and Pioneer Square have significantly reduced instances of illegal dumping, vandalism, and overflow scatter throughout 2024.”

Its needle program, meanwhile, includes 23 boxes across the city including one on Capitol Hill at Cal Anderson Park’s restroom building that collected more than 800,000 sharps in 2024

One area of keeping Seattle “clean” won’t involve SPU any longer. The city’s “Graffiti Rangers” are now organized under Seattle Parks and Recreation. The city says the work of the rangers jumped in 2024 with graffiti cleared from 1,091,204 square feet of public property, a 25% increase if you measure the removal by the foot. Find It, Fix It complaints about graffiti leapt 28%.

You can read the full 2024 report from SPU here (PDF).

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