Curbside Composting Comes to The Big Apple
Composting food waste is a win-win. It means that there are fewer food scraps rotting away in landfills, and at the end of the composting process one is left with every gardener and farmer’s delight: the black gold full of vitamins and minerals that is compost. Now, New York City has expanded their curbside composting program from just two of the city’s five boroughs to all of them.
Promoting sustainability
According to the Gothamist, the city’s curbside composting program began in Brooklyn and Queens in 2022. Now, in autumn of 2024, it is expanding to all five of the city’s boroughs. In the framework of the program residents are required to separate food scraps, yard waste, and dirty packaging into a separate bin. The material will then be collected by the city, and either given away to home gardeners, sold to landscapers, or turned into energy.
The main objectives of the program is to promote sustainability, and surprisingly enough, put a dent in the urban rat population. Rats are attracted to the food waste in landfills, and often rip open food packaging from the city streets, thus drawing even more unwanted critters.
“This is the beginning of a transformative change,” Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council told InsideClimateNews. “It holds great potential for neighborhoods, cities and ultimately for the world’s climate if we can make composting the go-to method for dealing with food scraps, yard waste and other organics.”
Room for Caution
And yet, despite what was said above, there is room for caution. Note that the city claims that the food waste will be turned into compost or energy. But at this time, the vast majority of the waste collected through the pilot composting program in Brooklyn and Queens was not actually turned into compost but an engineered bio-slurry which was then turned into methane — a biofuel which is used to heat homes and buildings.
As it stands, Staten Island will be the only borough where the majority of the collected food waste will be turned into compost. The issue with this, according to environmental groups, is that it means that the city will keep investing in fossil fuel infrastructure; an infrastructure that is old and leaking. And when it leaks methane, it is leaking a gas that is 80 times more planet warming than carbon dioxide.
Even so, the program is a step forward. The pilot in Queens diverted more than 12.7 millions of pounds of organic matter from landfills. The Gothamist points out that there have been fewer rat sightings.
Goldstein told InsideClimateNews, “Step No. 1 is getting New Yorkers to separate their organics, step No. 2 is ensuring that the separated food scraps and yard waste go to their highest and best and most sustainable use — which is composting.”
Now that the first step is on its way to becoming a reality, activists can start working on ensuring that the second step becomes a reality as well.
