2 million pounds of trash removed in Seattle service to camps, RVs last year

Seattle Public Utilities collected almost 2 million pounds of waste around encampments and RVs in 2025, according to a recently released city report. Trash pickup for people living outside and in vehicles now represents nearly 40% of the waste collected from city streets, sidewalks and greenbelts.

The numbers from the department's Clean City division illustrate the growth of city programs to keep areas around RVs and encampments clear, often while people continue to live in them. Overall Seattle Public Utilities collected 5.3 million pounds of waste - some of it hazardous, including 661,000 needles - from the public right of way in 2025.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has said her goal is not to keep encampments as they are but to bring as many people as possible inside with new shelter units and keep public spaces clear. Still, the Clean City efforts show the importance of addressing health and safety concerns in the meantime, her spokesperson Sage Wilson said.

"Trash removal doesn't solve homelessness, but it does provide people some basic human dignity while helping keep our public spaces clean, safe, and welcoming to all," he said.

This work is also being ramped up in advance of Lumen Field hosting six FIFA World Cup matches in June and July.

SPU's efforts are often lesser known than encampment clearings, which frequently become a flashpoint in debates over how Seattle should handle homelessness. The Clean City team works to clear the right of way for homeless people as much as their neighbors in houses and apartments, interim division director Curtis Bright said.

The services for people who are unsheltered involve city crews traveling around Seattle doing regular pickups among clusters of RVs and larger encampments - not unlike the garbage trucks that service apartments and homes.

"A lot of folks may not see us out there," Bright said. "Or they may not see how trash and debris and illegal dumping and needles are removed from the street, but we're deploying teams and crews out there daily, seven days a week."

The department's efforts targeted at RVs, in particular, have expanded in recent years.

In 2017, Seattle Public Utilities started a remediation program that required people to move their RVs so workers could clear the area. But during the pandemic, there was a period when the city wasn't forcing vehicles to move. So, with debris piling up, Clean City also began collecting trash from around RVs while they stayed put.

In those "geo-cleans," as the city dubs them, SPU workers go out weekly to the same RV sites. The program has grown significantly as it's added more staff, from 155 cleanups in 2022 to 1,190 cleanups in 2025.

In total, the RV cleaning efforts resulted in 1.1 million pounds of trash removed last year.

On a recent weekday morning, the purple bags that differentiate trash from personal belongings for Clean City workers were already tied up and ready for pickup in a section of the Sodo neighborhood where RVs line roads running along shipping warehouses.

Alice Mendiola, who has been staying in the area while she tries to get on a path to housing, said it was great the city offered the service. There are no other trash options for the dozen tents and RVs nearby. So without this help from the city, the space around the RVs can be prone to rats and insects.

"It's helping us," Mendiola said, "keeping the area clean."

With many RVs clustered in Sodo, just south of the stadiums, Seattle Public Utilities also expects those cleanups to be a big part of preparing for the 2026 World Cup. Ahead of the 2025 Club World Cup in Seattle, SPU workers made 16 visits to clean areas around RVs, taking 42,000 pounds of trash with them, the report said.

Bright said the city is already increasing its efforts in those areas ahead of the June start to the FIFA games.

Visitors to the area can also create extraordinary amounts of trash. Seattle Public Utilities said in its report that it expects all the people around the stadium this summer will bring an extra 180,000 pounds of trash.

For the last decade, Seattle Public Utilities has also provided regular trash services to certain encampments, leading to the removal of more than 716,000 pounds of waste last year. According to the report, crews had an average of 41 camps they visited regularly, a number which has been roughly the same for the last several years.

This past year, Clean City added to that work with deep cleans around several greenbelts that are prone to encampments in South and West Seattle. Just those efforts resulted in more than 81,000 pounds of trash.

Much of the Clean City work can happen outside of encampment clearings, which fall under the purview of the city's Unified Care Team. That means the millions of pounds of waste Seattle Public Utilities reported in 2025 doesn't include the tents, belongings and trash the city might have thrown away in clearings.

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