The Baltimore City Department of Public Works has submitted its draft of the 10-Year Solid Waste Management Plan to the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) for the state agency’s approval. The plan is available on the DPW website.

MDE will provide its comments within 60 days. Following the state's feedback, the draft plan must be adopted by the Mayor and Baltimore City Council. Once approved by MDE and adopted by the City Council, the plan will go into effect in January 2024.

DPW is grateful for the thoughtful engagement, comments and questions from community members. This feedback has been critical to helping us develop the final draft plan. DPW received a total of 768 comments from public testimony and written feedback. All comments  and responses to common comment topics are posted on our webpage.

Most comments fell into eight topic categories: programmatic, legislation/code, education/outreach, environmental equity concern, organics, infrastructure, administration, and communications.

DPW held five public meetings to present plan drafts and gather public comments and concerns, which have helped the department craft the plan. Three online meetings were held as the draft was 60, 90 and 99 percent complete. Two in-person and online meetings were held to allow the public space to review and comment on the final draft.

In total, the five public meetings had 388 attendees. Twenty-four of Baltimore City’s 31 zip codes were represented at the meetings.

The State of Maryland requires Baltimore City to adopt and maintain a comprehensive solid waste management plan covering at least the subsequent 10-year period. The plan identifies goals for managing the solid waste stream including reuse, recycling and composting from residential, institutional and commercial users. Visit the 10-year plan’s section of our website for more information.