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Mandatory composting starts Sunday
Composting is finally back. The city’s mandatory program, which was interrupted by covid, starts Sunday, Oct. 6; compost will be collected on the same day as recycling. Brooklyn and Queens have been at it for a while; Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx are just catching up.
Buildings with four or more units are required to have a brown bin, and the Department of Sanitation is giving them out for free here. You can also use any bin (55 gallons or less) with a secure lid and can order a free DSNY decal for your bin describing how to compost.
DSNY WILL PICK UP:
leaf and yard waste
food scraps including meat, bones and dairy
food-soiled paper including greasy uncoated paper plates and pizza boxes
DO NOT COMPOST:
diapers
personal hygiene products
animal waste
non-paper packaging
Compost collected in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and parts of Queens will go to the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, where it is anaerobically digested — the process of converting food scraps and yard waste into renewable energy (biogas) and fertilizer. Otherwise that same biogas is released directly into the air — and food scraps make up one-third of New Yorkers’ trash.
Queens has been composting since 2022, and it took some needling from the Manhattan borough president and councilmembers to get it back here. The curbside bins, controlled by an app, will stay in place for now. See that map here.
If you want some NYC compost, you have to register to pick it up in Greenpoint or Queens between May and September. Seems a little complicated, but if you are really into it, see that info here.
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Happy to see it! We currently keep a big metal bowl in our freezer to toss compost into. We used to drop it off at the Green Market on Saturdays, but since they’ve stopped collecting we’ve been using the orange compost bin on Greenwich & Chambers instead. Between that and the regular recycling, I feel like there are whole weeks where we don’t have garbage to put out and our kitchen always smells fresh now without have discarded food scraps sitting in the can for a couple days.
About time…………
I wish this city would spend as much time, money and caring about the daily crime on every.block in the city as they do on garbage.
At the first link from your article: “Curbside Composting service is now available to ALL NYC residents citywide.”
“Available” is very different from “mandatory.”
I would love for my building to participate in this free program, but since it’s not mandatory we will not be composting.
It is mandatory for all buildings with more than 4 units. But it will not be enforced until April 2025. If you don’t believe me, here’s the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/article/curbside-composting-brooklyn.html