Welcome to NYC School of Data — a community conference that demystifies the policies and practices around open data, technology, and service design. This year’s conference concludes NYC’s Open Data Week & features 30+ sessions organized by NYC’s civic technology, data, and design community! Our conversations and workshops will feed your mind and inspire you to improve your neighborhood.
To attend, you need to purchase tickets. Venue is accessible and content is all ages friendly! If you have accessibility questions or needs, please email us at < schoolofdata@beta.nyc >.
If you can’t join us in person, tune into the main stage live stream < schoolofdata.nyc/live > provided by the Internet Society New York Chapter and sponsored by Reinvent Albany. Follow the conversation #nycsodata on Bluesky.
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In July 2024, the NYC Department of Sanitation added several new datasets to Open data that help tell the story of where garbage goes. These datasets provide data on the annual tons of refuse sent to each of the transfer stations used by DSNY, as well as details on the landfills and WTE combustors that receive those tons go after they leave the transfer station. The data presented in three tables that can be linked to show the quantities of NYC trash that flow through transfer stations and on to different disposal locations. The tables also show information on costs, travel distances, and modes of transportation.
In conjunction with two additional datasets already existing on Open Data, it is possible to estimate the flow of refuse from an individual district through the transfer station and on to specific disposal sites outside the city. This is the closest New Yorkers have ever come to being able to follow their trash on an ongoing basis. Knowing this information puts fresh perspective on what it means to dispose of your trash; and how doing other things with it -- like recycling, composting, donating, reusing and reducing -- is a better option.
This presentation will tell the story of how these datasets were requested and ultimately put up on NYC Open Data, and will provide a "how to" primer on using and interpreting the information in maps and nonspatial analysis. This information is especially relevant to residents of disadvantaged communities in NYC where waste transfer stations cluster, and to activists in community composting, urban agriculture, and local reuse enterprise who see NYC's zero waste future as one in which materials are kept local to the extent possible, and risks are not exported to other communities.
