Glitter
Glitter is a Philadelphia-based neighborhood cleaning service built around a simple idea: what if the people who share a block could also share responsibility for taking care of it?
Founded by Morgan Berman, Glitter allows neighbors to pool contributions to pay for regular cleaning of their block. Local cleaners remove litter and trash from sidewalks, streets, curbs, and storm drains, while residents can contribute at different levels rather than relying on a single household—or waiting for the city—to solve the problem. As participation grows, blocks can increase the frequency of service.
But Glitter is more than a private street-cleaning company. Its model deliberately sits in the complicated space between individual responsibility, collective action, and municipal responsibility. Who is responsible for the condition of the sidewalk outside your home? The property owner? The city? The person who dropped the trash? The neighbors who use the block? Glitter’s answer is less about choosing one than creating a mechanism through which people can act together.
The organization also treats cleaning as neighborhood infrastructure and employment. Glitter hires locally, including people facing barriers to employment, and emphasizes consistent cleaners who can become familiar presences on the blocks they serve. Its model has expanded beyond individual residential blocks to partnerships with civic associations, commercial corridors, BIDs, elected officials, and public-space programs.
Each participating block also has a digital record showing cleanings, photographs, schedules and other information, making the often-invisible work of maintaining public space visible to the people paying for and benefiting from it.
Glitter offers a particularly interesting case study in a question that runs throughout the Sidewalk Ballet: when a space belongs to everyone, who takes care of it?
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