Disproportion of NYC Litter Sanitation

Aiming to address the negative association between perceived excessive littering and lower-income zip codes in New York City.


Author: Neil Kuldip

Overview

The focus of this project is to analyze and visualize some of the visible factors around NYC excessive littering in lower-income zip codes.

These factors include: New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) Public Litter Baskets, DSNY Food Scrap Drop Off Sites, DSNY Districts, and Active Tobacco Retail Dealers. To measure these factors by zip code and income of residents per zip code, U.S. Postal Service data on zip codes, U.S. Census data on Zip Code Tabulation Areas and 5-Year Median Income was utilized. In order to measure the amount of excessive litter, DSNY reports on Monthly Tonnage and Scorecard Ratings of Acceptable Cleanliness of Streets and Sidewalks were reviewed. After filtering, cleaning, and using feature engineering to create columns for merging datasets, I was able to conduct my analysis.

I predicted that the zip codes that contained above average median incomes would have a higher density in DSNY resources. I also expected there would be a high correlation among the factors and with the measures of the excessive litter.