Startup Grind Global 2022, Redwood City

Three evenings on the same blocks

Each evening the surveyor walked Broadway, Middlefield Road and Hamilton Street around the theatre and picked up what was there. The time out changed from evening to evening, so the fair comparison is pieces per 100 m of street covered.

39

pieces per 100 m on the Sunday before, the most of the three evenings (583 pieces).

28 and 26

per 100 m after day one and day two (364 and 351 pieces). In 2020: 79 (56 without one stuck spot) and 43.

43%

of the litter was cigarette butts, the most of any type every evening.

16

pieces of conference paper: business cards, brochures and wristbands. None on Sunday.

Pieces each evening, by typeAll picked up by one surveyor

Sun, Apr 10Two days before

583pieces

Tue, Apr 12After day one

364pieces

Wed, Apr 13After day two

351pieces

Cigarette buttsPaperPlasticFood, glass and otherMasks and glovesConference paper

Two years apart, the same blocks

In 2020 we surveyed these blocks on the same three days of the week, plus the Monday. 79% of the street covered in 2022 was walked in 2020 too. The Sunday before looked about the same both years: 39 and 37 pieces per 100 m. The conference evenings did not. After day one, 2022 had 28; 2020 had 79, or 56 without the pieces logged at one stuck spot.

Pieces per 100 m of streetAmber: each year's highest

20222020

BaselineSun Apr 10 · Feb 9

39

37

Day oneTue Apr 12 · Feb 11

28

79^*

Day twoWed Apr 13 · Feb 12

26

43

Measured the same way as our 2020 page, so both pages give 2020 the same numbers: litter divided by the street each evening's walk covered (10 m squares along the phone's recorded track).

^* 2020's day one includes 280 pieces logged at one spot, where one phone's location stopped updating. Without them it is 56 per 100 m, still 2020's highest. 2020 also had a Monday survey after opening night: 49 per 100 m (538 pieces); 2022 has none.

What else was differentRead the comparison with these in mind

People. One surveyor in 2022; two to four in 2020. Per 100 m evens out the ground covered, not how closely people looked, and four people on one street may find more than one person would.
Time of day. In 2022 every survey was in the evening. In 2020 the Sunday was mid-afternoon and day one ran from the afternoon into the evening.
The event. The 2022 listing calls it a hybrid event. In 2020 our recap describes three tents filled with people.
Between evenings. The 2022 file marks every record as picked up, but others may also have cleaned these streets between the evenings.

Who and how longEach evening, both years

Evening	2022	2020
BaselineSun, Apr 10 · Sun, Feb 9	1 surveyor · 6:27 pm to 7:48 pm · 81 min out · 583 pieces	3 surveyors · 3:39 pm to 4:05 pm · 62 min out in all · 392 pieces
Day oneTue, Apr 12 · Tue, Feb 11	1 surveyor · 6:37 pm to 8:02 pm · 59 min out · 364 pieces	4 surveyors · 2:32 pm to 7:11 pm · 4.5 hours out in all · 956 pieces
Day twoWed, Apr 13 · Wed, Feb 12	1 surveyor · 7:24 pm to 9:07 pm · 79 min out · 351 pieces	2 surveyors · 4:04 pm to 8:19 pm · 102 min out in all · 564 pieces

What the sources said, checked

There is no write-up of the 2022 surveys, so this checks the event listing, the open-data release, our 2020 recap and a 2022 post against the data.

Match3 Close2 Differs4 Not in the data1

Source	What it said	The data
Event listing, Startup Grind	Global Conference 2022: Apr 12, 7:30 am to Apr 14, 9:00 pm.	The surveys were on Sunday Apr 10 (6:27 pm to 7:48 pm), and the evenings of Tuesday Apr 12 and Wednesday Apr 13, after the first two days. Thursday, the last day, was not surveyed.	Match
Event listing, Startup Grind	At the Fox Theater and in downtown Redwood City, 2215 Broadway.	Every located record in the public file lies within 136 m of the Fox Theatre. All but 4 are on Broadway, Middlefield Road, Hamilton Street and Courthouse Square (2 on Jefferson Avenue, 1 on Marshall Street, 1 on Winslow Street).	Match
Event listing, Startup Grind	3,000 startups and scale-ups; a hybrid event.	The litter data does not count people.	Not in the data
Our events overview, 2026	Apr 10 to Apr 14, 2022.	Three evenings, Apr 10 to 13. The last survey ended on Wednesday at 9:07 pm. Apr 14 comes from 7 records with no location whose local time in the file is UTC; they were taken on Sun Apr 10 7:07 pm and Wed Apr 13 9:03 pm Pacific.	Differs
Our events overview, 2026	1,425 pieces, 1,079 photos, 1 person.	1,079 photos by one surveyor, with 1,425 items. 1,298 of the items are litter; 114 are stickers and graffiti, and 13 are human or pet waste.	Close
Our events overview, 2026	Back at the Fox Theatre, two years later.	79% of the street the 2022 surveyor covered was also walked in 2020 (10 m squares along each year's walks).	Match
Our 2020 recap	Normally, tobacco is over half of all litter picked up; at Startup Grind 2020 it was 25%.	In 2022 cigarette butts were 43% of all litter (562 of 1,298), the most of any type on every evening. On the same three days of the week in 2020: 24%.	Close
Our 2020 recap	To-go containers, fliers and business cards were the most common litter at the 2020 conference.	Not in 2022: paper was 28% and cigarette butts 43%. Conference paper (business cards, brochures, wristbands) came to 16 pieces, none of it on Sunday.	Differs
Our 2020 recap	Litter rises during the conference.	Not in 2022. Per 100 m of street: 39 on the Sunday before, 28 after day one, 26 after day two. In 2020, measured the same way: 37, 79 (56 without the 280 pieces logged at one spot) and 43.	Differs
Tips post, January 2022	In 2019, we partnered with Startup Grind: we put up QR codes and positioned the trash cans.	The year in the post is wrong. The cans and restrooms tagged with QR codes are in the open data on Feb 7, 2020, and our recap of Startup Grind 2020 tells the same story. The 2022 file holds no cans or QR codes, only litter, stickers and graffiti.	Differs

Watch the three evenings

One map, north up. Each evening plays in turn: the walk draws as it was walked, its litter shows in colour and turns grey in the pause before the next evening. The camera closes in on the surveyor in slow motion five times: twice on Sunday, outside the Fox on Tuesday, and on the Fox block and in Courthouse Square on Wednesday. Masks and gloves, and conference paper, pop up with their names. A panel fills each evening's pieces per 100 m, with the same day of the week in 2020 as a white mark. The live screen shows 19 photos, each at the moment it was taken: the map slows as the surveyor reaches the spot, and the photo leaves before its clock falls a minute behind the map's. Between finds the screen shows the street the surveyor is on. At the end the two years stand side by side.

Press play for April 10 to 13, 2022, 124 seconds. It ends with photos from the surveys.

Open the map full screen

Butts, not paper

In 2020 paper was half of day one's litter, and our recap names fliers and business cards. In 2022 cigarette butts led every evening, Sunday included, and paper was 24 to 30% of each evening's litter.

Share of each evening, by typePercent of pieces; each 2022 evening with the same day of the week in 2020

Sun 2022

403025

Sun 2020

32302018

Tue 2022

443019

Tue 2020

19501120

Wed 2022

482421

Wed 2020

26352217

Cigarette buttsPaperPlasticFood, glass and otherMasks and glovesConference paper

Masks, and a little conference paper

21

masks and gloves on the street, 10 of them on Sunday, 6 on Tuesday and 5 on Wednesday. In 2020 the file has none. Masks and gloves share one type in the data, so they cannot be counted apart.

16

pieces of conference paper (9 business cards, 3 brochures, 4 wristbands), 11 of them within 40 m of the theatre. The first, 5 business cards outside the Fox, turned up on Tuesday evening. Sunday had none; its 3 flyers are counted as paper.

21

pieces in Courthouse Square, across Broadway from the theatre, in 6 minutes near the end of Wednesday (8:59 to 9:05 pm).

65

records of stickers (39) and graffiti (26), 114 items in all. They are noted on the street but are not litter, so they are counted apart and not mapped.

From the surveys

A few of the photos, taken where each piece lay before it was picked up. Photos with people, feet, shadows, cars, print or writing are not shown.

Mask on the street, Sun, around the Fox Theatre — Mask · Sun

Butt on the street, Sun, around the Fox Theatre — Butt · Sun

Plastic on the street, Sun, around the Fox Theatre — Plastic · Sun

Glove on the street, Sun, around the Fox Theatre — Glove · Sun

Food on the street, Sun, around the Fox Theatre — Food · Sun

Other on the street, Sun, around the Fox Theatre — Other · Sun

Paper on the street, Sun, around the Fox Theatre — Paper · Sun

Plastic on the street, Tue, around the Fox Theatre — Plastic · Tue

Mask on the street, Tue, around the Fox Theatre — Mask · Tue

Wristband on the street, Tue, around the Fox Theatre — Wristband · Tue

Card on the street, Tue, around the Fox Theatre — Card · Tue

Food on the street, Tue, around the Fox Theatre — Food · Tue

Plastic on the street, Wed, around the Fox Theatre — Plastic · Wed

Wristband on the street, Wed, around the Fox Theatre — Wristband · Wed

Mask on the street, Wed, around the Fox Theatre — Mask · Wed

Other on the street, Wed, around the Fox Theatre — Other · Wed

Paper on the street, Wed, around the Fox Theatre — Paper · Wed

About these numbers

The open-data file holds 1,079 records for this event, with 1,425 items (a photo can hold more than one). 1,298 items are litter: cigarette butts, paper, plastic, food, glass and other litter, masks and gloves, and cards, flyers, brochures and wristbands. The other 127 are stickers, graffiti and human or pet waste.
Evenings are told apart by Pacific time from each record's UTC time. 7 records have no location and carry UTC time in the file's local-time column; they belong to Sunday and Wednesday. They count in the totals but are not mapped.
12 records of human or pet waste (13 items) count in the item total but not in the litter, and are never mapped.
Per 100 m of street: pieces of litter divided by the street the evening's walk covered. The walk is the line through the phone's recorded locations and its photos in time order, kept within 150 m of the photos, lightly smoothed, with no straight jump over 45 m; the street covered is the 10 m squares that line passes through. Our 2020 page uses the same code, so both pages give 2020 the same numbers. 2022: Sunday 1,510 m, Tuesday 1,320 m, Wednesday 1,370 m. 2020: 1,060 m, 1,210 m and 1,320 m.
The replay draws the phone's own track (a fix every 15 s, 868 in all), kept within 150 m of the photos, with stray fixes removed and lightly smoothed: 5.2 km over three evenings, inside a block about 220 m across. Our project notes give 13.2 km, which counts the zigzag between photos as route.
On Sunday from 7:02 to 7:07 pm, 28 photos carry a stale location about 98 m north of where the phone's track was. The replay draws them on the track at their time; the public file keeps the stale location.
The team's internal file for this event also holds 243 records from San Francisco on April 22, 2022. They are not part of the event and are not in the open data.
Each evening is shortened to 24 to 42 seconds; the five close-ups play slower, and the map slows for a moment at each photo on the live screen. A photo appears when the map's clock reaches the time it was taken; its own clock ticks on a second a second, and it leaves before the map's clock is a minute ahead of it. The photos on this page and the 19 on the replay's live screen were checked one by one at full size (no people, feet, shadows of people, cars, print or writing), cropped, and carry no location data.

Around Startup Grind 2022, the Sunday before had the most litter.