Who empties the can?
A neighbor asked us for a public trash can on his block. Denver's answer was that the city doesn't put cans on sidewalks, only in parks. So we went looking for who does.
What the city told us
The City and County of Denver does not have place or maintain any trash receptacles in the public right of way unless they are outside of a city owned park. According to the Real Property Map, we are not seeing that this area is part of a maintenance district area. Denver 311, case 11509970, answered the day after we filed it.
That answer is correct, and we checked the part we could check. The block sits just outside the Five Points Business Improvement District, so no district covers it. What the answer doesn't say is who does it instead.
Everywhere someone is paid to empty a can
Blue shading is a park, where a city crew works. Red shading is one of the 38 districts where property owners tax themselves for it: 12 business improvement, 22 maintenance, 4 general improvement. Every dot is a can. Zoom into your own block and see which kind you have.
Drag to move, pinch or scroll to zoom, tap a can to see who empties it.
The ring is the block that asked. Can locations come from OpenStreetMap, mapped by volunteers, pulled July 31, 2026. Boundaries and the 369 parks come from Denver's own published layers. Nothing about your location leaves this page.
What we found
162 of 416 cans. A city crew empties these.
28 cans, on blocks where businesses vote to tax themselves for it.
192 cans in no park, no district, and not at transit. Somebody empties them. No public record says who.
Denver doesn't publish a list of its public trash cans. The only city layer named for them holds 74 dumpster survey points from December 2023. Every can on this map was put there by a volunteer with a phone. Nobody at the city has a better list.
How other cities answer this
New York publishes the location of every public litter basket it owns. There are 20,413 of them in the city's open data, and anyone can download the list. We pulled that number in one request while building this page.
Toronto doesn't buy its bins. Since 2007 a private partner has installed and maintained the city's street furniture, litter bins included, in exchange for advertising rights, at no cost to the city. Toronto reports the deal has returned more than a billion dollars in value across the twenty year term, including $445.5 million in cash.
Neither city has litter solved. Toronto's bins overflow and that contract runs out in August 2027. New York's council spent last budget season fighting to restore basket service the mayor had cut. What both cities have that Denver doesn't is a decision: emptying a public trash can is somebody's job, and here is who pays for it.
Denver's answer to a neighbor who asked for one can was that a business should get a permit and buy it.
Sunday, bring a bag
We're not waiting for the paperwork to sort itself out. Sunday, August 9, at 9 in the morning, we're picking up the 2800 block of North Downing. Bring a bag, fill a bag, hand it to me. I'll take it to the dump and post what the dump cost.