Help stop illegal dumping in San Jose!
Opened this issue · 7 comments
An important issue to the mayor is the steadily increasing, steadily getting more expensive and blighting our city illegal dumping.
Illegal dumping is an issue that plagues a lot of cities! How do we stop it? Analytics? Policy? Public Shaming? Making it easier to find people to pick up your trash?
DATA
Here is some scrubbed data provided by the City of San Jose Data Analytics Team covering the time period 1/1/2012 to 8/9/2015.
Here is a similar but more up-to-date dataset provided by the Mayor's Office covering the time period 1/1/2012 to 10/30/2015.
Or if you just want to see a visualization check out these for charts on the growing problem and maps of the trash!
Interesting link showing ways to prevent illegal dumping
https://www.sanjoseca.gov/index.aspx?NID=3679
Monitor the site: pick up litter and remove graffiti from the site so that does not appear abandoned or unused.
Clean up immediately: dumping attracts more dumping. Remove dumped items immediately so that more people do not add to the site. Also, illegal dumping that sits can affect our local water ways and attract insects and animals creating an unhealthy environment.
Improve visibility: trim overgrown brush and low hanging tree limbs, improve lighting or remove other obstacles that obscure the area from the neighborhood.
Block access: check if there is ability to block easy access to the area, such as chaining parking lots and debris bin areas during off hours.
Activate the site: Use the area, for example, make a community garden, sitting area, put up a basketball hoop, landscaping, or a mural. Make sure it is apparent that this is an active area for the community.
Report it: report illegal dumping on private property to Code Enforcement at (408) 535-7770 and illegal dumping of furniture, shopping carts, mattresses on sidewalk/street to the Department of Transportation at (408) 794-1900. If witnessing dumping in progress call the Police Department.
Also...
Consider donation or recycling of unwanted items instead of tossing them out. This will reduce waste and allow reuse of materials. Your recycling hauler also offers convenient collection options for bulky items. Not sure who your recycling hauler is? San José’s Collection Day Lookup provides a convenient way to find your garbage, recycling, and yard trimmings collection day, street sweeping schedule, neighborhood cleanup event, and service provider contact information.
Map of 'trash dumping hotspots' for this year http://cdb.io/1KxA0zm
Map showing dumping by District http://cdb.io/1PM5Orx
@3vivekb Any idea whether we can get this data on regular refresh ? Also, could it be added to official open data portal?
News story hot off the press...
@jamestyack I emailed some relevant parties concerning the data
@jamestyack I added an updated dataset from the Mayor's Office that goes up to 10/30/2015. See link in the first comment above.