The Color of Climate
What Happens When a FreshDirect Warehouse Moves Into Your Neighborhood
Facilities and warehouses for online delivery companies frequently end up in communities of color
This is The Color of Climate, a weekly column from OneZero exploring how climate change and other environmental issues uniquely impact the future of communities of color.
When online grocer FreshDirect announced in 2012 that it wanted to build a sprawling 400,000-square-foot warehouse in the South Bronx, part of New York City’s northernmost borough, community members, activists, and public officials spoke out in protest. They raised concerns about the potential environmental impact on Mott Haven, the majority Latinx and Black neighborhood where the company wanted to build the warehouse.
“They feel that our waterfront is a junkyard,” Mott Haven resident Monxo Lopez told the New York Daily News. But despite the opposition, which included Bill de Blasio, who was running for mayor of New York at the time, the company built the warehouse. It opened in 2018.
It turns out the community’s concerns about pollution were warranted, according to research published this month in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public…
