Charlotte Volunteers Logged 11,000 Hours Removing 5,500 Bags of Trash in 2024

Volunteers worked over 11,000 hours in 2024 picking up more than 5,500 bags of trash across Charlotte. Keep Charlotte Beautiful programs led this work. The city launched a broad anti-litter campaign that pulled together several departments and outside groups.

Keep Charlotte Beautiful manages the city's Adopt-a-Street and Adopt-a-Stop programs. It stands as Charlotte's primary volunteer cleanup organization. The program started in 1974 under the Housing & Neighborhood Services department.

Storm Water Services recruited about 3,800 volunteers who gathered nearly 80,000 pounds of trash from streams throughout Mecklenburg County in 2024. This department safeguards more than 3,000 miles of streams and shorelines countywide.

Solid Waste Services removed about 7,000 tons of trash in 2024. Street sweepers clean roughly 12,000 miles of streets per year. The department looks after 500 public trash cans at transit stations and other spots.

Full-time cleanup crews tackle litter on 12 routes daily. These teams cover 60 routes in the urban core every two weeks. They handle 90 major corridor routes each quarter.

A litter research study identified around 3.7 million pieces of roadside trash in Charlotte on any given day. That's about four pieces per resident, well below the national mark of 152 pieces per resident.

The five most common littered items are cigarettes, miscellaneous plastic, miscellaneous paper, plastic food wrappers, and plastic bottles. Volunteers checked 250 random road segments citywide at four intervals during the year to collect this information.

NCDOT clears litter from 15,539 miles of roadway in Mecklenburg County monthly. Contract crews collected 250 tons of roadside trash in 2025.

The Adopt-A-Stop program has logged 112 volunteer hours across all six Corridors of Opportunity. CATS and Keep Charlotte Beautiful operate this program. Volunteers clean selected bus stops around town.

Residents can file litter complaints through the CLT+ app, the city's website, or by dialing 311. Several volunteer programs stay open for anyone interested, including Adopt-a-Street, Adopt-a-Stop, and Adopt-a-Stream.