PITTSBURGH — The 10th annual Pittsburgh Garbage Olympics brought together 709 volunteers across 50 neighborhoods on Saturday for a citywide neighborhood cleanup competition.
Volunteers collected 1,290 bags of trash, 744 tires, 244 televisions and 548 bulk items during the event.
The annual community-building initiative encourages residents to team up with neighbors to collect debris, tires, electronics and illegally dumped bulk items to beautify local streets. Over the past decade, more than 5,000 volunteers across 50 of the city’s 90 neighborhoods have gathered more than 10,000 bags of trash, 3,700 tires, 1,600 televisions and 3,000 bulk items.
Prizes are awarded annually for most trash collected, largest team, strangest item found and dirtiest volunteer. This year, Allentown won for most trash collected after gathering 29 bags of garbage, 346 tires, 37 televisions and 29 bulk items. South Side Flats brought the largest team with 110 volunteers, while Sheraden won strangest item found for locating chimpanzee bookends. Brookline was named dirtiest volunteer.
Pittsburgh Mayor Corey O’Connor praised the organizers and participants for their decade of community service.
“The Garbage Olympics is Pittsburgh at its best – bringing neighbors together every year to show their neighborhood pride and compete to see who can redd up the best,” O’Connor said. “Partnership and community matter in the vibrancy of our neighborhoods. Thank you to the volunteers who have organized this event for 10 years and to the hundreds of Pittsburghers who competed this year. It’s amazing to see the impact of these volunteers in just a couple of hours - every one of them deserves the gold medal.”
The competition operates through partnerships with local government entities. The Department of Public Works collects all gathered trash and refuse from each neighborhood team at the conclusion of the event and the City of Pittsburgh Clean Pittsburgh Commission serves as an official partner.
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