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Cities Skylines 2 garbage guide

Here’s how to deal with Cities Skylines 2 garbage so you can keep your streets clean, your skies clear, and most importantly, your citizens happy.

Cities Skylines 2 garbage: an aerial view of a city at nighttime.
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Cities Skylines 2 

How do you get rid of Cities Skylines 2 garbage? Any area that’s filled with humans is bound to accumulate waste over time, whether that’s a by-product of another process, or just some Johnny’s empty soda can littering the streets. As the god of metropolises, you’ll have to put measures in place to ensure that your city stays free and clear of garbage.

Our Cities Skylines 2 review goes into the improvements and changes made from the first entry in the series, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the messy nature of your city’s inhabitants. If you don’t want a build-up of garbage and filth on your Cities Skylines 2 map, you’ll need to know exactly what to build, and who to pay to keep everything clean. Here’s how to get rid of Cities Skylines 2 garbage.

Cities Skylines 2 garbage: an overheard view of a city, and a cursor outlining a district.

How to get rid of garbage in Cities Skylines 2

Every building in your city will produce garbage of some kind, with higher-density buildings and the low-educated portion of your population producing the largest amount. If this isn’t dealt with regularly, you will face a trash build-up, resulting in the unhappiness of anyone nearby.

There are three ways you can remove garbage from your streets, each with its own pros and cons. When you build one of these garbage management buildings, they will send out garbage trucks to collect the trash from the streets. The three garbage management buildings are:

Landfills

Basically a hole in the ground that slowly fills up with trash. An absolute eyesore, and a pollutant for the areas nearby – not an ideal long-term solution, but it is cheap and quick. Eventually, you’ll have to expand this landfill as the existing space is filled.

Cities Skylines 2 garbage: an aerial view of an incineration plant.

Incineration Plant

The Incineration Plant takes garbage and burns it, turning the waste into electricity for your city. This extra power can be extremely helpful for a burgeoning city, but the process of creating it adds a lot of pollution to the air, so keep it away from any residential areas.

Recycling Plant

Perhaps the most environmentally friendly garbage management process, the Recycling Plant takes trash and recycles it, turning the waste into something that can be used by manufacturing plants to create new goods.

Now you know how to deal with Cities Skylines 2 garbage, there’s no excuse not to have a sparkling city, free of trash. If you want to add a different flavor to how your metropolis looks, check out the Cities Skylines 2 DLC we can expect post-launch and how Cities Skylines 2 mods will work.

When he's not writing guides at PCGamesN, PK is usually found waiting for the respawn timer in League of Legends, hanging around a tavern in Baldur's Gate 3, or fighting his way through the Settled Systems in Starfield. PK's extensive knowledge of video games is matched only by his extensive wardrobe of flannel shirts, which he has been curating since he was born, proving he was always meant to be a games journalist. He watches an episode of Star Trek every night before bed, and he loves toast, even though it makes him feel a bit sick. Buttery goodness exacts a heavy toll, one that he's willing to pay.