What happens to food waste in garbage is both terrible (rats, garbage juice) and heavy (methane emissions, climate crisis). In New York, the fate of old food has recently become a passion, political stink.
But now, New York City has a new plan to help more New Yorkers separate organic waste (garbage and garden waste that can be turned into fertile soil) from other non-compostable trash. Trying to get over the “drama” of composting.
New York has long lagged behind other large cities in recycling organic waste, accounting for one-third of the waste that goes to landfills. In 2020, City Hall paused its composting program and plans to expand it citywide, citing budget pressures caused by the pandemic.new, complex when it comes back opt-in process It served only a handful of regions.
Eric Adams put citywide composting on the “Get Stuff Done” list during the mayoral election. After his inauguration, however, he called the program “broken” and scrapped it to save money. He vowed to find a cheaper, more effective and fairer approach, but composting enthusiasts were outraged.
City Hall is now announcing a new pilot program that will allow more people to participate at a lower cost. There are also new principles of organization. It’s no drama.
City officials will announce on Monday that garbage trucks will be cruising through all Queens residences every week beginning in October to collect sorted food and yard waste.
Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said developing a program and making waste sorting less of a headache than a new city service is a top priority for her department.
“Simple and easy to use,” Tisch said in an interview on Sunday. “The New Yorker has no drama.”
Officials and environmental advocates said the key to success was promoting the program as cleaning up trash both in people’s homes and on the streets and reducing the city’s growing rat problem. They argue that composting could be as appealing to people who think little about the climate impact of their trash as they do to avid environmentalists.
“The whole concept is that New Yorkers want to do the right thing, and if you make it easy enough, they will,” Tisch said.
A new compost truck will just show up, she said. No opt-in required (“It was a psychodrama”). No need to attend (“We’re not there yet”). And there is no “vindrama”. The City will provide a brown trash can, similar to existing opt-in programs. This will continue. But in Queens, you can also bag yard waste such as fallen leaves. For food scraps, any bin will do, as long as it’s airtight and rat-proof.
Tisch also has plans to eliminate what she calls another “level of drama”: Apartment residents will no longer need approval from building management. that.
According to health officials, building managers often think that food waste bins mean more mess, more odors, and more trouble for building supervisors.
“They are wrong.” Garbage is terrible now. The rat tears the bag nowRats are less likely to enter if the organic matter is in a separate, sealed container. ”
The Adams administration also hopes the Queens plan will dampen the political drama.
We asked environmental advocates, climate experts, public housing residents, local gardeners, and others who have pushed successive government agencies to adopt universal composting for their input on the plan. They cautiously call it promising.
“This could be the transformation of New York City’s composting,” says Eric A. Goldstein, attorney and New York City environmental director for the Natural Resources Conservation Council. “May a beautiful butterfly be born.”
He said “Butterfly” will become a universal street composting collection for everyone in the city.
Either way, City Hall was likely to be pushed in this direction. A city council bill calling for a citywide mandate for organic matter collection attracted enough sponsors to veto it, including Adrian Adams, chairman, and Sandy Nurse, chairman of the Sanitation Committee.Goldstein says the Queen’s plan didn’t take He stressed the need for the action and said the timing was “probably not a coincidence.”
The ultimate goal is to recover the 8 million pounds of compostable waste that are currently sent to landfills every day. This waste releases methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Even in districts that implement opt-in composting, only 10% of his residents participate, so trucks travel long distances between stops. The mayor claims the cost per ton of organic matter collected will be exorbitant.
By designing routes and work schedules more efficiently, health officials say their plan will cut organic matter operating costs per community plot by more than half from $860,000 to a projected $320,000. They said the new cost of the program would total $2 million, or less than $1 per Queens resident.
Innovations include trucks that follow compost-only routes reaching more homes in a day. Other routes use double-sided trucks to collect both recyclables and organics. The department will hire 76 new organics-only sanitation workers to help reduce overtime pay.
Queens has more trees and gardens than other boroughs, and people already have to put cuttings and leaves in separate bags, which is why garden waste has a higher composting rate in cities like Seattle and Toronto. was chosen because it helps achieve
The borough’s diversity, including dense apartment blocks, single-family homes, large public housing complexes, and various underserved areas, will also test how best to make composting universal and equitable. said the official.
Goodman said another pilot program has exceeded expectations. The city has installed sealed compost bins on sidewalks. People can deposit their organic waste by unlocking it with an app and turning the handle. Mostly located in the Astoria section of Queens, the bins fill up daily with very few inappropriate items.
New street bins, mainly in Upper Manhattan, the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn bring the total to 400.
The city’s organic waste will be sent to the Newtown Creek facility to be turned into renewable energy. It is also sent to the City of Staten Island composting site and turned into soil that is donated to parks and community gardens or sold in bulk.
The city also plans to spread the word that people can store compost in freezers or small sealed indoor bins to reduce odors in their kitchens.
“It’s nothing new,” Goodman said. “Anyway, it’s in your trash.”