Living in one the world’s cleanest cities is something that most Americans have never experienced. Only one city in America — New York City, surprisingly — ranks highly among the world’s cleanest cities, coming in at 3rd, according to World Population Review. Still, there’s a wide gap between living in one of the cleanest cities compared to living in one of the dirtiest cities in the world. No U.S. cities appear in World Population Review’s top ten dirtiest cities. However, New York City was rated as the world’s most wasteful city, which may come from its exceptionally large and dense human population. Regardless of the United States’ global standing on cleanliness, there’s no doubt that some cities in the country are significantly dirtier than others. Let’s assess the 20 dirtiest cities in the United States.
To figure out what belonged on this list, we started by looking over the data from LawnStarter’s 2024 study on the cleanest and dirtiest cities in the United States . The study utilized various metrics, including air quality index, infrastructure availability, and resident dissatisfaction scores. LawnStarter began their study with a list of the 500 largest cities in the United States. Then, they eliminated any cities from the list that lacked sufficient data on one or more of the categories they were studying. Finally, they gave scores out of 100 points (lower is better) that showed how dirty a city is in comparison to the other cities on the list. To best understand this list, we emphasize that a low numerical rating indicates a dirtier city as per the data from LawnStarter. So, Number 1 would be the dirtiest.