Composting has been the law of the land in New York City since October, when new regulations began to require every resident across the five boroughs to separate their organic waste and food scraps from their regular trash.
But there’s a problem: Only a small fraction of New Yorkers are complying with the rule. Public data shows less than 5% of the city’s household organic waste is currently being diverted from landfills.
The conundrum sets the stage for an enforcement blitz come April 1, when the sanitation department can begin issuing fines starting at $25 to landlords who buck the compost mandate. The rule will be enforced by inspectors who check garbage bags for illicit organic waste, according to sanitation officials.
Participation rates are particularly low in areas with large buildings where landlords haven’t bothered to set up compost collection bins for tenants. City data shows a densely populated community district in the South Bronx only put out about two tons of compost for collection at the curb in February, compared to 1,375 tons of garbage. Sanitation officials expect those numbers to climb once ticketing begins, and have pointed out that it took decades for recycling compliance in New York City to climb above 40%.
But the lack of composting compliance is also a concern in low-density neighborhoods where residents are responsible for hauling their own trash, recycling and organic waste from their kitchen to the curb.
John Hunt, 75, lives in a single family home on East 100th Street in Canarsie, Brooklyn and is a self-described naturalist. He recycles and keeps a compost pile in his backyard to collect his yard waste and dead plants. But he had no idea he’d been breaking the law for months by throwing his home’s food scraps into the trash.
“That’s going to be a pain in the neck,” Hunt said when told about the composting mandate by a Gothamist reporter. “I’ll probably just do it the regular way until I get a ticket.”
Hunt’s neighborhood of one- and two-family homes — where residents tend to toss out leaves and other organic waste from their yards — is the type of area where city officials saw relatively high composting rates in previous iterations of the curbside collection program. But the rollout in residential Canarsie shows most people are still in the dark about the new rules.
As a sanitation truck rolled down East 99th Street, a block over from Hunt, block on compost collection day last Friday, only three out of more than 20 homes had set out compost bins for collection.
Martial Marcoux, one of the only composters on the street, said it would be difficult to tell people to add composting to their weekly routine.
“Maybe people don’t have enough time,” he said. “I think it’s just a personal thing.”
Sanitation department officials have said it’s premature to judge the compost program’s effectiveness before enforcement mechanisms are in place.
Trucks like this one are hauling a small fraction of the organic waste New Yorkers toss out everyday. The rest is going to landfills.
Liam Quigley
“ We have made participation easy,” acting Sanitation Commissioner Javier Lojan said during a City Council hearing on Tuesday. “Now it’s up to New Yorkers to follow the law or face the summons.”
The department also faced criticism at a City Council hearing on Tuesday for not doing enough to educate New Yorkers about the rule and the incoming enforcement.
The sanitation department plans to mail a flier to every New York City telling them about the composting rules and fines this week, according to department spokesperson Vincent Gragnani. The agency’s outreach efforts also include knocking on doors.
Gragnani said the department also has $2 million in federal funding to spend on advertising about the program. That’s in addition to 20,000 written warnings the department has already sent out to property owners who aren’t following the compost rules.
“We know that this takes time, but our easy universal program is working, and we have statistics to prove it,” Gragnani said in a statement.
Sanitation spokesperson Joshua Goodman added that the collection rates for organics are often lower in the winter months, when fewer people toss out yard waste.
“We know it takes time, this is not a surprise,” Goodman said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
