NYC’s Community Composting Cuts Are Putting Its Curbside Plan at Risk
By killing funding for community programs, composting advocates say the city is kneecapping its plan to make curbside composting mandatory.
A woman drops off food scraps at a community-compost collection site in Queens.
Photographer: Lindsey Nicholson/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
On a chilly day in December, a crowd gathered in the shadow of City Hall in lower Manhattan to chant, listen to speeches and wave signs crafted for the occasion. “No cuts to compost!” read one held by a man with shoulder-length gray hair. “Compost Adams” read another, with a picture of the New York City mayor. One sign featured a rat-faced Statue of Liberty.
Among the crowd were employees from many of the seven organizations that together form the fabric of New York City’s community composting. Each week, residents bring these groups their food scraps — collected in bespoke tins, old yogurt containers and ziplock bags — to be transformed into compost that can fertilize everything from street trees to community gardens. It’s a useful service in a city where many lack space to compost on their own: New York’s community-composting programs divert an estimated 4,150 tons of food scraps (often called “organics”) from landfills each year, according to GrowNYC, one of the organizations.