This project attempts to look at the New York City recycle rate changes over the last decade. It focuses on the two mainstream recyclables: paper and MGP (metal, glass, and plastic). The project uses the US Environmental Protection Agency's data as a benchmark to measure the effectiveness of the NYC program. Products of this project are three bar charts: NYC collection rate, national collection rate, and a comparison of the two. As the EPA data covers only up to 2018, the final comparison does not include the latest three years of the NYC data.
- DSNY Monthly Tonnage Data - NYC Open Data
Contains NYC monthly waste collection data between 1990 and 2022. Besides the two mainstream recyclables, this dataset also includes organic materials, which is out of this project's focus. Those data are combined with the trash numbers, and shown as "NYC non-recyclable & others" in the charts. - Materials Municipal Waste Stream 1960-2018 - United States Environmental Protection Agency
Contains national annual waste collection data from 1960 to 2018. This dataset reflects more specific material types collected in waste stream. To be compared with the NYC data, this project combined the four types of metals into one "metal" category. All other materials, except for paper, glass and plastic, are grouped under "US non-recyclable and others" in the charts.
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| NYCmswTotal_p.csv | Checkpoint dataset created from recycle_stat_NY.py, used to create the final combined chart. |
| USmswTotal_p.csv | Checkpoint dataset created from recycle_stat_US.py, used to create the final combined chart. |
| banner.png | Project header image. |
| barchart_NY.png | Stacked bar chart created from recycle_stat_NY.py. |
| barchart_US.png | Stacked bar chart created from recycle_stat_US.py. |
| barchart_compare.png | Combined stacked bar chart created from recycle_stat.py. |
| recycle_stat.py | Main script to compare NYC and US datasets in a stacked bar chart. |
| recycle_stat_NY.py | Script handling the NYC data and create a new csv file and a visual. Should run BEFORE recycle_stat.py. |
| recycle_stat_US.py | Script handling the EPA data to create a new csv file and a visual. Should run BEFORE recycle_stat.py. |
All scripts are written in Python 3. The resulting charts will be opened in a web browser upon running the scripts. To run locally, please download the two original datasets from sources listed in previous section, the latest version of Python, and the following modules installed:
Both recycle_stat_NY.py and recycle_stat_US.py should be run BEFORE recycle_stat.py, so that the two checkpoint datasets will be created for final comparison.
This project produces three stacked bar charts.
When reading separately, New York shows a slow annual increase in collecting recyclables. The total reached the highest point of 19.78% (9.35% in Paper and 10.43% in MGP) of the total waste collected in 2020, then declined in the next two years. While nationally, the total collection of recyclables declined slowly, and reached the lowest percentage of 48.2% on 2018.
When comparing side-by-side, New York's collection of paper and MGP continued to be dwarfed by the national percentage. Even in its worst year, the national collection rate of paper and MGP still more than double to New York's. It shows the that the City has plenty of rooms to improve its recycle program.