By Carol Tannenhauser
- I can tell my California friends, with pride, that composting is now mandatory in Manhattan. Like so many other things, it is harder to accomplish in the city, but New Yorkers are getting it done.
- It motivated and helped me organize my kitchen and refrigerator. Now all those half-eaten containers of tuna fish and cucumber salad, and six-day-old bagels, can be dumped into my shiny new composting bucket. No smell, no mess. Every Friday, my building puts a bin in the basement beside the elevator from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and I bring my bag of compost-to-be (which is surprisingly heavy!) and deposit it in the bin. The first week, mine was the only deposit I saw and I worried that the building would stop the service if no one else participated. I rejoiced this week when the bin was half full.
- My trash is lighter, lesser, and odor free. With all the discarded food stuff going into my compost bucket, and recyclables safely in the correct of two garbage pails, my remaining trash will go and disintegrate (or whatever it does) appropriately in a landfill, I know not where.
- I have the enormously satisfying sense that I am doing something important for the planet, something that requires effort. I feel like a good citizen.
FYI – You can buy a compost bucket at your local hardware and other stores, or on Amazon (search for “countertop compost bucket”). For more information about curbside composting, read Scott Etkin’s explainer — HERE
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Yay! And love your bucket :), just ordered the same!
I’m lucky to have an orange/bluetooth bin on my corner and I used it several times a week!
It’s great that we’re keeping stuff out of landfills and doing something slightly better with it. I just wish we were actually composting the “compost.”
Mayor Adams cut funding to the organization that was taking vegetable scraps, turning them into usable soil, and distributing that soil to community gardens (which their volunteers also help tend) for free.
Instead, the city takes the compost to a digestor facility in Brooklyn, where it gets mixed with raw sewage, then turned into methane, which is a major greenhouse gas. The methane was supposed to be sent into the city’s gas grid (which we’re simultaneously trying to phase out, in order to reduce greenhouse emissions), except the facility has been too unreliable to do so. Instead, the methane is either burned (turning it into C02) to power the facility that’s doing all this or released into the atmosphere.
It’s better than just dumping it in a landfill, where some of it would gradually turn into methane anyway. And the facility can take things (like meat, bones, and paper towels) that real composting can’t handle. But I really wish we’d go back to actually composting things, and I hate that the city falsely advertises what it’s doing as “composting.”
I keep seeing this same negative comment being made on every post about curbside composting. I too love GrowNYC and would like to see their funding restored, but they were handling a tiny volume of material for an enthusiast audience who were willing to sort their organic material carefully and take it to a local greenmarket open for limited hours. That was never going to be a practical citywide solution.
It’s also a GOOD thing that the city is moving ahead on compost collection even if they don’t yet have the ideal solution for handling all the material on the other end. There are a lot of moving parts to this process. Why would it be better for them to first build an ideal solution for processing the compost and then have it sitting idle while they then figure out the collection process? This order makes more sense to me, since it’s certainly not worse than before, when we were sending it to a landfill.
I’m very gladly putting my compost in the sidewalk bins. We should all be doing that, and asking our buildings to sign up, and cheering on any of our neighbors who are doing so as well. This is real progress. The perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of the good.
It’s marginally better to take it out of landfills, but turning it into methane is far from “good.” And calling it composting is just a lie. It irks me. But people just see the lie without knowing or mentioning what’s really happening. Are we even trying to scale up actual composting? You can’t compost the stuff from the bins because there’s too much in there that won’t compost properly. GrowNYC wasn’t the only compost program that got cut, either. We can do better. But only if the city government is pushed to do so, instead of investing in a lie and a fleet of trucks hauling it all to a broken facility that’s supposed to be producing something that we’re trying to phase out.
This. There are some positive efforts – the city has vastly expanded its *actual* composting facility on Staten Island – but DSNY has to end the digestion and shift to true composting. It’s essential.
Can’t we compost on Staten Island?
Hear, hear!👏 I find it enormously satisfying (and easy!) too, and hope Carol’s list inspires more people to join in.
(I collect scraps in Bag to Earth paper bags–leakproof and 100% compostable–which I store in my freezer: https://www.amazon.com/Bag-Earth-Compostable-Resistant-Cellulose/dp/B08K495MW5)
Would that I could. No room for the bin; no room in the freezer, barely any room for a box of composting bags. The paper, regular garbage, plastic/metal/glass is all I can handle. Sorry.
Composting in a city of 8 million. It really is a VERY big ask for most of us. It’s okay to make composting optional but this business of fining buildings for non-compliance is nothing but a money grab. And thanks to pgw up there in the comments, we’ve learned that the process is inherently absurd. Where is common sense?
What’s absurd is trucking peoples food and yard waste to rot and create methane in landfills as far away as Ithaca, because all the landfills near the city are full. It is much more logical and green to take it somewhere close like Newtown Creek where it is broken down and put to some use, until more composting infrastructure is built. Separating your scraps is easy once you get the hang of it. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, and start enjoying the benefits described by Carol!
And to all of you with full freezers, maybe it’s time to clear out stuff that’s been in there for years that you’re never going to eat, and make room for one bag of food scraps!
I bought one of those pretty buckets years ago, but found that in warm months it was a happy home for millions of fruit flies. Plus you have to buy replacement odor filters. I started putting organic waste in a plastic bag in the freezer and that’s very satisfactory. Just don’t dump out the plastic bags with the organic matter though. Even bags labled “recyclable” are a no-no. (They deteriorate at a much slower rate than the organic stuff.)
The Dept of Sanitation regulations say that you can dispose of composting material in plastic bags–that the bags are separated later. Since I’m somewhat skeptical of that, I have purchased composting bags. (And the green bags in Trader Joe’s are compostable as well.)
Question. Can you use an old ceramic toilet bowl as a compost collection bin? I found one on the street and thought the size and shape would be perfect. Plus with the lid and the ceramic construction, it should prevent any smells. I brought it in last night and thought about deploying it in this fashion to avoid sending this beast to the landfill. Just a bit concerned to look in the tank.
For attractive composting bins, see this on Amazon:
GloDeals Compost Bin, Detachable and Countertop Bin, 4 Liter / 1.06 Gallon, Stainless Steel Small Trash Can with Lid, Kitchen Compost Bin Under Sink Cabinet Hanging Trash Can for Kitchen
Has someone tried to do the composting in their own home by using the Vitamix Food cycler?
Food Cycler FC-50-SP
I think it’s a good initiative. However, some of us live in tiny apartments. I have a small Jr. 1 bed with a tiny kitchen. I barely managed to squeeze in the two recycling recepticals plus the regular garbage can. I literally have no space to put another one.
New York Magazine has a list of inexpensive compost bins. Most are small, and have lids to contain the odor. I recognize the author’s from the list. I’m waiting for mine to arrive!
I forgot to post the link!https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-compost-bins.html
I bought the green bags on amazon and don’t bother with a special container. I keep them in the freezer, no smell, no rush. If people don’t want to buy the green bags, they can use paper bags.
There’s no need to spend money on green bags. the DSNY says they separate out any plastic bag you might use (old bag from a loaf of bread, Amazon shipping bag etc) Also, an old yoghurt container works fine., dump contents, wash and reuse.For people with little counter space and small freezers, pop your food scraps in a paper or plastic bag and toss it out more frequently. Yes, it requires habit change. Also, noting how much food we may be wasting when leftovers languish in the fridge can be an eye opener. Here’s a plus, your garbage bag will be nearly empty and won’t smell. As for where food scraps are really going, the city needs to do a better job of explaining why anaerobic digestion which produces methane is a viable solution. There’s a big composting facility in Staten Island but that’s it for local compost. Compost is a great idea but in NYC it needs better execution.