New York City has extended its curbside composting program to all five boroughs. Here’s how to sort through the heap of rules and guidelines.
This fall, New York City expanded its curbside composting program to all five boroughs, good news for New Yorkers looking to lessen their environmental footprint. As part of the program, residents must now separate their food scraps and yard waste from other garbage and place them in a bin for pickup.
The average New York City household generated nearly 1,900 pounds of trash in 2023, according to a study by the Sanitation Department. About 36 percent of that waste was food scraps and other organic material, so composting could greatly reduce the amount of trash hauled to landfills. Composting would also curb greenhouse gas emissions and help combat the city’s rat problem by cleaning up the streets.
Composting rules can be confusing. How one city treats its compostable materials might be different from another. Here’s a breakdown of how it works in New York City.
What exactly is composting?
Composting is the decomposition of organic waste, like food scraps, into a carbon- and nutrient-rich fertilizer, said Whendee Silver, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “Some people think it’s gross, but it’s a completely natural process,” she said.
New York City has a long history with composting. In 1990, 1,000 tons of leaves were composted under a pilot program at Edgemere landfill, a Queens facility that has since closed. This current citywide initiative started with a pilot program that began in fall 2022 in Queens.
