Overflowing Disparities: Examining the Availability of Litter Bins in New York City

Abstract

In the 1980s, activists’ concerns about the disproportionate placements of landfills in low-income communities ignited the environmental justice movement. Today, similar issues of environmental injustice—the limited availability of litter bins across New York City (NYC) neighborhoods—remain unresolved. This study examines the association between NYC neighborhood income and litter bin availability. The NYC Department of Sanitation 2020 Litter Bin Inventory and archival measures of neighborhood composition and socioeconomic status were aggregated within NYC census tract neighborhoods. Multilevel Bayesian conditional autoregressive Poisson models estimated the prevalence rate ratio for counts of litter bins according to median household income in each census tract, accounting for spatial autocorrelation. Bivariate associations identified that census tracts with higher median household income had a greater prevalence of litter bins than census tracts with lower median household income; however, spatial autocorrelation attenuated the relationship between median household income and availability of litter bins. Further research is necessary to identify the spatially structured condition that accounted for the observed effect. The results warrant further investigation of both perceived and actual disparities in litter bin availability.