Litter is Solvable. Indianapolis is Proving it.

By: Nicole Hornyak

Today, our national partner Keep America Beautiful released their 2026 National Litter Study. The headline is encouraging: litter on America’s roadways and waterways is down 34% since 2020. Down a third in five years across the entire country. That is a measurable shift in how Americans treat the places they share.

The National Picture

Waterway litter, the kind that ends up in creeks, rivers, and the storm systems that feed them, dropped 45%. Roadway litter, the visible kind most of us pass on the morning commute, dropped 22%. The number of pieces of litter fell from 152 pieces to 96 per person. Said another way – if everyone just picked up 96 pieces of litter, we would solve the problem across the nation!

The study also makes clear that 35 billion pieces of litter still sit on the ground across the country. Progress is real, but the work is not done.

Researchers don’t credit one program or policy for the successes. It is a layered effort: public education that changes how people think about a wrapper or a cup, local cleanup programs that pull what is already there, infrastructure that makes the right choice the easy one, and sustained community engagement that turns a one-time cleanup into a habit.

That is a perfect description of what we do in Indianapolis.

What 34% Looks Like on an Indy Block

In 2025, KIB neighbors and partners collected 834,548 pounds of litter across the city.

That number isn’t just a line in an annual impact report. It lives on the blocks where a neighbor stopped passing the same fast-food bag every morning. It lives along the canal stretch where a corporate team spent a Saturday filling bags. It lives on the corridors where the Busy Roads Clean Team – a partnership with Keys2Work – has hauled more than 70 tons of debris off high-traffic shoulders and medians since 2023.

It also lives in the programs that keep showing up after the spotlight moves on. More than 300 Great Indy Cleanup projects ran in 2025. 1,251 Adopt-A-Block captains are caring for 312 miles of Indianapolis streets right now, week in and week out. Canoe crews work the rivers. Volunteers — more than 20,000 of them last year — show up for the project that fits their Saturday.

That is how a 34% national number gets built. One commitment at a time, in 30,000 cities and small towns, by people who decided that the block in front of them is worth caring for.

America 250

This year, the country marks its 250th birthday. Keep America Beautiful has framed 2026 as the Greatest American Cleanup for America’s 250th, with a national goal of 25 billion pieces of litter removed and 25,000 communities engaged by July 4.

Indianapolis is one of those communities. The KIB calendar has been packed with cleanups, planting days, and corridor projects: the work that, multiplied across the country, gets the United States to that 25 billion number.

It is a fitting frame. A clean city is not a project. It is a promise neighbors make to each other.

What You Can Do

The 34% reduction did not happen because the country waited for someone else to fix it. It happened because millions of people decided their block, their park, their stretch of river was worth a Saturday morning.

If you live in Indianapolis, there is room. Find a cleanup, claim a block, request a tree, or just bring a bag on your walk this week. Start at our project calendar.

Thirty-five billion pieces remain. We know how to move that number. Indianapolis has been showing the country how.

Categories: Adopt-A-Block, Busy Roads and Waterways, Clean Neighborhoods, Great Indy Cleanup, Neighborhood & economy, News & Features, Partners, Plogging, Research & Data