How is Litter Dealt with in Knox County Communities?

Many of us have noticed an increase in litter in our beautiful community over the past year. You might be wondering why that is and who’s responsible for cleaning it up.

First of all, reduced capacity due to the pandemic certainly has its place here, but also Knox County and the City of Knoxville have separate means of dealing with litter, which means that it can be a little confusing about who to contact. We’ll go over how each litter system works, how you can report particularly bad litter areas, and how you can get involved. We also have many wonderful organizations, such as our own, who help to keep Knoxville clean. 

Knox County

Knox County Solid Waste manages a county-wide litter removal program, which utilizes a multi-faceted approach to dealing with litter. A combination of Knox County employees, community volunteers, and non-violent offenders respond to litter complaints and clean up roadside litter and roadside dumps on a daily basis. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, KC’s non-violent offenders’ program was suspended and their litter crew was scaled back for much of the past year reducing their team to three people. This has meant that litter complaints have piled up and took longer to respond to, and also has left Knox County largely dependent on their volunteer-based Adopt-A-Road program.

Luckily, Knox County was able to return to full capacity at the beginning of 2021, and they have been working diligently to bring our roads back to pre-pandemic conditions. It’s important for people to remember though, that without litter reports sent in from individuals, the Knox County litter crew might not get to certain roads. 

If you know of a litter hotspot in Knox County, feel free to use their litter reporting form to get it on KC’s radar. 

City of Knoxville

The City of Knoxville tackles litter a little differently. The City does not have a dedicated litter crew, instead, employees from the City Public Service Department help out when they have a chance. Sometimes that means pushing a mowing job to pick up litter during the week, or as has happened recently, it can mean that crews work on Saturdays to tackle particularly bad roads. Normally, the City also benefits from volunteers and weekend litter crews who often include people completing court-ordered community service. However, due to the pandemic, the city has had to largely scale back these weekend litter crews, as they are not able to host and transport them safely. 

City of Knoxville crew picking up litter on a recent Saturday in February.

Unfortunately, the scaled-back workforce in Knox County and the City of Knoxville has meant that litter has become an even bigger eyesore. To remediate some of the problems, the City has utilized its employees on Saturdays to pick up litter in particularly bad areas. They are also hopeful that with warming weather comes more interest from the community to help solve our litter problem. 

The City suggests that people who see problem areas call our 3-1-1 Center for Service Innovation (865-215-4311 if dialing from outside Knox County). There's a growing list of problem locations, and Public Service Department crews volunteer or are assigned to perform cleanups as their time allows.

Keep Knoxville Beautiful & Other Organizations

Here at Keep Knoxville Beautiful, we are a volunteer-based litter reduction organization. That means that we not only organize community service events that target litter in particular, but we also supply groups with the items they need to hold their own successful litter cleanups. We also run Knox County and the City of Knoxville’s Adopt-A-Road program. These efforts, particularly the ones that allow individuals and groups to help on their own, free us to focus on other ways to help keep Knoxville clean, green, and beautiful. Our efforts not only focus on litter cleanups, but also beautification events like tree planting, mural development, and graffiti abatement. 

In addition to our efforts, there are also volunteer-based litter reduction organizations that operate in our community. The Water Quality Forum operates the Adopt-A-Stream program for Knox County Stormwater, the City of Knoxville, the City of Oak Ridge Stormwater, the University of Tennessee, and the Town of Farragut. Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful and Ijams Nature Center also hold many stream cleanup events throughout the year that directly impact the creeks, streams, and rivers of our beautiful community. 

What You Can Do

If you’d like to get involved in reducing the impact that litter has on our community, consider volunteering with us or one of the other organizations mentioned above. You can find a list of all of our upcoming events on our website. You can also advocate for better litter legislation to your local council member. 

Also, keep in mind that a lot of litter comes from passive littering. This can mean those unsecured items in your truck bed simply blow out while you’re driving, or it can come from over-filling a public trash can or your garbage bin at home. Take the time to consider how you might be accidentally littering and see if there are any steps you can take to reduce that potential. Securing your truck beds is one way, but also ensuring that you’re disposing of items in public properly can go a long way to reducing our litter problem. 

It’s going to take effort on all of our parts to truly tackle the litter problem in our community. It takes volunteers and local organizations working together with local government to be able to really see a positive change.