New York City has instituted a number of initiatives to arrive at a "zero-waste" future, including drop-off points where residents can take food, electronics, and textiles waste and divert it from landfills. I used data from OpenData NYC to determine whether the distribution of these drop-off points throughout New York City was equitable across race, income, and education levels. This analysis was run using a buffer interpolation. I also performed a location optimization analysis to determine ideal locations for future drop-off points in Manhattan.
My analysis suggested that drop-off points within Manhattan tended to be located in richer, more highly educated, and whiter areas of the city. To expand these services throughout the city, officials should ensure that they are soliciting input from the communities without these services to understand how they could interact with informal markets around second-hand goods, what the community's needs and preferences are, and how drop-off points could impact land use or community character.
