The 'cleanest city in America' is Milwaukee? That's what a new study says

A large-scale study released Tuesday claims Milwaukee is "the cleanest city in America."

The study, conducted by HouseFresh ― an online publication focused on air quality issues and evaluating indoor filtration products, analyzed 12.3 million sanitation-related 311 complaints placed over the last year in cities across America. These included complaints regarding garbage, waste and recycling.

The study ranked the locations based on the number of sanitation-related reports per 100,000 residents.

With only 309 complaints per 100,000 residents, Milwaukee saw by far the fewest complaints of the 23 cities HouseFresh studied.

Baltimore saw the most with almost 47,300 complaints per 100,000, followed by Sacramento, Calif., which saw nearly 34,200 complaints per 100,000.

But despite being the cleanest city in the study, Milwaukee was not home to the cleanest zip code studied. That title went to Houston, Texas' 77546 zip code, which only had 19 sanitation-related complaints per 100,000 residents.

Other zip codes in the top 10 included four more in Houston and ones in Sacramento, Charlotte, Kansas City, Miami and Dallas.

What do other studies say about Milwaukee's cleanliness?

Another recent report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that the amount of trash produced by Wisconsinites has been declining since 2008 and 2009.

Residents of the state sent about 8.2 million tons of trash in Wisconsin landfills in 2021, down from nearly 12 million tons in the mid-2000s. It should be noted though that this decline was due in part to a decrease in waste from construction and demolition projects, fewer of which occurred during the Great Recession.

More:Milwaukee suburbs show stark differences in garbage collection