New Yorkers will soon be required to compost all their food scraps, yard waste, and food-soiled paper under a sweeping bill that passed the City Council Thursday.
The mandatory composting legislation for all 8.8 million residents is broader and more ambitious than Mayor Eric Adams’ current program, which is implementing voluntary curbside composting across the five boroughs through the next year. The new legislation roughly follows the rollout already underway, with Manhattan being last to receive curbside composting in October of next year.
Under the legislation, mandatory participation will begin in April 2025.
“We are taking a giant leap forward towards a cleaner, greener and more just future,” said Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who chairs the sanitation committee, at a press conference on Thursday morning.
But there are questions about the feasibility of composting every scrap of New York’s organic waste. Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch has previously said the city will need to find more locations to process the 8 million pounds of organic waste generated daily.
The city currently separates yard waste to send to a New Jersey compost facility. The remaining organic waste is turned into slurry and sent to the Pine Island Farm in Massachusetts or the wastewater treatment plant at Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, where some of it is converted into biogas in digester eggs. But the majority of the city’s organic waste still ends up in landfills that produce the greenhouse gas methane.
The sanitation department opted to roll out the city’s voluntary composting program borough by borough because the agency needs time to find more processing facilities for the organic waste, Tisch told the City Council at a March hearing.
A spokesperson for the mayor touted the city’s progress on reducing waste without commenting on whether he’ll sign the council bill into law. Adams has allocated $45 million for the expansion of the current compost program.
“Mayor Adams has been clear that to fully address climate change, we must significantly reduce New York City’s waste in an efficient and effective way, which is why we are in the process of rolling out the nation’s largest, easiest-to-use, most effective and most cost-effective curbside composting program,” mayoral spokesperson Kayla Mamelak said in a statement.
Annel Hernandez, the climate policy director in Nurse's office, said the package of legislation passed with a veto-proof majority. The "zero waste" bills also set a goal of diverting all recyclables and organic waste away from New York City landfills by 2030.
In a statement, Tisch also did not address the feasibility of mandatory composting, but said the voluntary program is “easy, no drama, focused on service.”
The city has one mandatory requirement for organic waste already in place – yard waste is now required to be separated for collection at certain times of the year. Enforcement begins in Queens on June 30 and will be rolled out across the rest of the city over the next year.
