Pittsburgh seeks to hire an ‘anti-litter specialist’
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The city of Pittsburgh’s anti-litter specialist position is open, and the starting salary is $35,104.
What does an anti-litter specialist do, exactly? While the title might bring about visions of a uniformed authority — maybe armed with litteridentifying tools — investigating dump sites, the position is more of a central dispatch for litter pickup in the city.
While the position isn’t new, the job title recently drummed up some interest and debate on Pittsburgh Reddit message board, or subreddit.
“Basically, they act as liaison between the public works division and neighborhood groups who organize cleanup events,” said Marcelle Newman, assistant director of the city’s Department of Public Works. “For example, this past weekend, [community groups] had the Garbage Olympics.”
Had the position been filled, the new anti-litter specialist would have processed the community groups’ registration forms for the event and coordinated crews to the various neighborhoods to pick up what residents had collected.
Lena Andrews leads litter cleanups in East Liberty every other month, and she also leads the East Liberty Trash Warriors for Garbage Olympics, a neighborhood competition.
The Department of Public Works “gives us supplies and picks up all of the trash piles, which is really a gargantuan task,” she said. She described the process with the department as “excellent.”
(If you’re curious, Beechview won this past weekend’s Garbage Olympics, collecting 70 trash bags, five TVs, one refrigerator and one bike, according to a city news release on Monday.)
The anti-litter specialist also will respond to all 311 requests — the city’s line for non-emergency concerns — regarding litter or illegal dumping.
Trash and illegal dumping are historic problems in the city.
Ms. Newman said currently 45 major recurring illegal dump sites exist in the city.
In 2011, watchdog group Allegheny Greenways reported that it removed more than 291 tons of trash and 3,700 tires from illegal dump sites in the city.
The city is responsible for picking up debris in parks, along city streets and on rights of way, including street and sidewalk medians.
“Do you see those signs in neighborhoods ‘We Buy Houses’? That’s illegal. That’s sign pollution,” Ms. Newman said, noting that election season, with all of its yard signs, can become a busy time of year for city anti-litter efforts.
But Brian Oswald, South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association board member, remains skeptical about the city’s anti-litter specialist position.
“My problem with it is bureaucracy kind of sucks,” he said. “We’re volunteers, the expectation from the city is we register it, tell them where we’re collecting trash, get it approved. We don’t like to do the extra work.”
As the former president of the association and current chairperson of the group’s upcoming StepTrek, which takes residents up and down a 6.5mile route along the South Side’s city steps, he said he has seen trash — a lot of beer cans and blankets from homeless encampments.
In preparation for the Oct. 6 StepTrek, Mr. Oswald said he and others will collect about 30 bags of trash from the 15th Street city steps alone. Then he’ll call a Department of Public Works contact to come pick it up.
“The bureaucratic idea for creating more positions to fix the problem isn’t a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s doing anything,” he said. “If we had more DPW people on the ground, that would be good.”
Ms. Newman said the city is committed to working on the litter issue, and one way is through the anti-litter specialist position.
“It really does just require someone who is passionate about cleaning up the city and helping us with environmental issues,” she said.
The position requires a high school diploma or GED certificate and a driver’s license. The department posted the job last week and will accept applications until Oct. 8.