Completing the Circle
Can New York City get its residents to compost?
3245 Words
By: Ari Mehlman
“Everything’s garbage,” according to retired New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) worker Phillip Spiegel. “I had the chance to go on recycling… I chose garbage. I know what’s garbage,” he continued.
Spiegel, a 65 year-old Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn native, represents a special generation of trash haulers in this city — the ones who became the liaisons between policy and people in the 1989 recycling revolution of New York City (NYC). They were on the ground amidst the city-wide effort to separate metal, glass, plastic, and paper from garbage, diverting those from the landfill. It was a lot to keep track of…
“We hated it,” Spiegel stated dryly, and continued: “For you to finish a route was almost impossible.” But it seemed to be a difficult task for everyone. “I don’t think the residents liked it. Most people told me recycling was as much of a pain for them as it was for us,” he recalled.
As much as it is a pain — not all refuse is garbage. And we’re still having a hard time wrapping our heads around that. “I don’t think everyone is even honest about it today. I don’t know if people don’t care or what,” Spiegel admitted. People are still putting trash in the recycling, and vice versa. The DSNY 2017 Waste Characterization Study found that 50% of blue bin contents is contaminated, and sent to the landfill. DSNY also reported that 34% of what went to landfill in 2017 could have been recycled.
That’s only half of it. Another 34% of landfill gunk could have been composted. In a perfect world, 68% of that waste wouldn’t be in a landfill — and the potential mitigation of pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, along with the emergence of restorative practices could be profound.
When food waste goes into landfills and receives anaerobic digestion (without oxygen), it begins to release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The nationwide average percentage of food waste in landfills is 25%, but it’s responsible for 58% of landfill methane emissions. NYC’s landfills are 35% organic waste, so our methane emission rates are even higher. If food waste gets composted, methane emissions subside. Plus, the carbon-rich product stays in the soil, which is good for plants — but bad when it goes into the atmosphere.
Between a questionable recycling program, high costs for brimming landfills, and a sidewalk trash-fueled rat prevalence, Sanitation has acknowledged a need to change.
To combat these problems, they’re targeting organic waste. By the end of 2024, NYC residents will be expected to separate food scraps, food-soiled paper, and yard waste from the rest of their trash. It can go in any clearly labeled, securely fastenable bin of 55 gallons or less. And DSNY will come around and take it away on recycling day to be processed specially. Voila, curbside composting. But if NYC’s recycling program is as unsuccessful as the statistics suggest, how can we expect another municipal waste reduction program to find success?
New York has to find a way to get its people to compost.
Debra Sheintoch has been attempting to convert composters for years. Once the director of the smaller scale, DSNY-funded NYC Compost Project, today Sheintoch works with Sanitation’s Bureau of Public Affairs. She directs their outreach programs and partnerships — including curbside composting info-sessions. “We recognize this [new program] is a big lift for New York City. It’s gonna take a long time to get everyone participating,” she explained. It’s a process. Currently, curbside operations are underway in Brooklyn and Queens, but residents aren’t yet required to participate. In the meantime, ‘Smart Compost Bins’ have been placed in all five boroughs, where anyone can drop off food scraps. Bins must be unlocked via the NYC Compost app. This may be a barrier of accessibility, but the alternative is contamination from non-organic waste — so it goes to the landfill. Once the curbside program is in full effect, residents will be fined for composting improperly.
How does the city hope to garner engagement before they start picking pockets? “We need to increase participation to make this program effective. To increase participation, we need to allow plastic bags [with curbside service],” said Sheintoch. Unlike other composting programs, this one isn’t fussy about the bag you use — plastic can get separated out later. Plus, the city isn’t asking residents to pick apart their food waste, in other words, they don’t refuse animal bones and dairy. “This material is being sent to an industrial-scale facility. It uses high-heat to handle all kinds [of organic waste],” Sheintoch explained. This makes the process easier for New Yorkers. Yard waste, food, and anything attached to it can be composted.
To further ramp up engagement, DSNY canvassed all residences in Brooklyn and Queens with less than 10 units, informing residents of the new program — explaining how and what to compost. Larger residential building managers were equipped with those materials for their own distribution. This tactic spreads the word, but the materials offer little incentive — except on the cover page — by way of an anthropomorphic maple leaf saying “Lock up the (rat icon) food.” NYC’s rodent problem is concerning to many, but that’s not the only reason someone might want to compost. Is the promise to solve that issue enough to move people to participate?
All that (rat) food that you throw away could be plant food. Or biofuel. Or simply not be filler for a landfill. There are multiple upsides of composting, but the city is mostly focusing on the rat piece of it. Parker Limón, who works with the Center for Zero Waste Design, sees DSNY’s strategy: “The number one thing that people should know is that food waste is what’s bringing the pests,” he said. However, he doesn’t want New York’s eternal fight against rats and filth to overshadow the additional incentives that composting can provide. “Food waste doesn’t have to be a smelly gross thing, but a productive resource,” he said.
The environmental upsides intrigue people. “I think [DSNY] should be focusing more on the fact that it’s healing our green spaces,” said Joshua Seow, one of the three remaining full-time employees at Big Reuse, a community composting program. “You see the way we’re heading, you want to do everything you can,” he continued.
For years, Big Reuse has done just that — composting in the name of environmentalism. It’s more of an in-person experience. Big Reuse had provided New Yorkers with facilities — gardens, markets, community bins — as sites to dispose of organic waste. In the process, they’ve created a devoted community under the brim of the NYC Compost Project. Last year, they partnered on 62 foods scrap drop offs and returned 666,300 lbs of compost to the community. Still, the new city-wide program will have a greater reach — but the visibility in giving back and the intimacy of an in-person experience makes community organizations like Big Reuse useful.
Rhonda Keyser, who directs Cafeteria Culture, understands the importance of establishing that tangible, personable connection to create success. Her grassroots organization empowers NYC public schoolers to advocate for waste reduction in their schools. “Seeing people do it and their testimonials, that’s how people start to convert,” she said. While DSNY’s canvassing is surely a step in creating advocacy, “It doesn’t have the same effect as someone from your community,” said Keyser. “People trust more what they learn from their neighbor,” she continued.
For comparison: Before recycling was a municipal ordinance, smaller sites served locally, communally. According to DSNY’s “Processing and Marketing Recyclables in New York City” (2004), written by Robert Lange: “This was driven by the economy’s need to expand and, according to some, a change in culture and lifestyle that impelled Americans towards consumption and disposal as a way of life.” Despite the widespread need for processing power — caused by an overproduction of bottles, packaging, and paper in the 1970s and 80s — these sites closed due to hefty government cuts.
An oversight, perhaps. If local sites had persisted, recycling wouldn’t be outsourced. “[T]his would keep economic benefits within the City in the form of lower costs for DSNY, as well as jobs and tax revenues,” writes Lange. Additionally, environmental benefits would appear: “less truck transport, lower energy use, and reduced emissions.” Stratifying, as opposed to consolidating such a massive endeavor in waste collection may have taken some pressure off the central body of DSNY. Today, we face a similar dilemma with the introduction of city-wide composting; How will the advocacy of these local organizations overlap to those of the curbside services?
History might be repeating itself.
Budget cuts are in effect again. DSNY has decided to stop financing the NYC Compost Project. Additionally, NYC Parks is looking to kick Big Reuse out of its compost facility in order to build employee parking for the adjacent Queensbridge Baby Park development.
If the city wants to scale up its compostability, it may not want to continue investing in these programs that can only serve a limited geographic area and capacity. However, leaving them behind altogether might not be in their best interest either. Sunny Hardyal has been interning at Big Reuse this spring, to help with their website and data analytics. Before now, he hadn’t thought much about composting. “I went in with a computer science mindset, just trying to make money. And I ended up wanting to be more sustainable. I’ve incorporated being sustainable with my field of computer science and programming,” he admitted. Big Reuse is like a wise grandparent: “We’ve had years of experience in community composting. We’ve built up good trust with our community — the members, their family members, and we have students who learn about composting from us. We know how to teach-in. We’ve done many trials and errors, learned the best practices. Why spend more money on doing your own composting program when you already have multiple companies that do it effectively and efficiently? And I think we’re backed by 15 or 16 different council members,” said Hardyal.
Big Reuse is afraid that of all the ways their absence will be felt, the loss of passion for education may be the most detrimental to NYC’s composting success. “A lot of people on our team just love what they do — A lot of people who are hired for government jobs just [work] to get paid. But at Big Reuse, everybody has a passion. They’re willing to go the extra mile and talk to someone on the street about composting,” said Hardyal.
The long tail of education is priceless, especially when it starts early. It’s no revolutionary idea, but that intervention leads to widespread habits. Lange documented the “educational materials [for recycling] geared specifically for NYC’s approximately 1,200 schools. These materials include how-to-recycle information; curriculum materials for teachers; and for students, coloring and comic books, as well as fun give-aways such as t-shirts, backpacks, and beanie toys.” He writes that this specific attention to early education “has, for decades, enjoyed great resonance among a diverse constituency.”
Another current waste reduction initiative, Cafeteria Culture, serves as a good model for catalyzing the children, making a difference on the policy level. “It was students who asked, ‘as a ‘zero-waste’ school, why do we still have single-use plastics at lunch?’” Keyser asked. “Their questions lead in education — the answers lead to victory,” she continued.
While its advocacy is limited to NYC public schools, Cafeteria Culture has led by example when it comes to food packaging and food waste initiatives. The NYC public school system is the second largest daily food program in the country, only behind the US military. Consequently, the initiatives of Cafeteria Culture have influence. They pushed the city to get styrofoam out of schools, and instated a citywide plastic-free lunch day, which became monthly after a year — all using student engagement from the grassroots level.
“Our plastic-free lunch days give students an opportunity to give data and feel part of it.” Cafeteria Culture is directed to go into public schools that need help, and teach the students — but it’s not that easy. “We have to gain their trust… These are students to whom the system has not been kind. These are students who aren’t doing great on the standardized tests, but they’re learning in a whole different way. They’re gaining trust in civic participation… they can have a say in these processes,” said Keyser.
New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents are historically underserved by compost programs and education. “Some students are doing a family compost drop off at school,” Keyser said. 8.6% of students live in public housing, compared to the city-wide average of 4.8% (2013).
For two years now, formally, and another two in the lunchroom, Cafeteria Culture has been working with students at P.S. 188. 51% of them are in temporary housing, most of the rest in public housing. “They’re learning how waste takes on lower income communities of color,” said Keyser. “We give students camcorders and they go out and ask their neighbors if they know what happens to their garbage. That engagement gets them ready to talk to elected officials,” she continued.
When there’s simultaneous education and advocacy for and by the students, what follows is a real community impact on policy. “Making the shift is hard. The plastic industry has a stronghold on the markets and the people,” Keyser admitted. But they didn’t stop pushing. “We believe in reducing school waste to the point where it’s all processed locally. But we’re always surprised how fast things change once they start to move. Once we made the change to offer compostable [packaging] over styrofoam, it took 7 years for styrofoam to be banned [altogether],” she continued.
On a Friday afternoon in Hamilton Heights, Harlem, a group of students are in a community garden dumping massive containers of food waste into a trough. Others are standing by hand shovels, ready to chop up the stinky stuff. Nando Rodriguez has been making this happen for over 20 years with The Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis), a youth program that sparks student activism for a “more just and equitable future.”
“You have to find the worms, play with the Roly-Poly. Don’t be afraid of these bugs. If you had that interaction at a young age, those fears go away, he explained. “I like to engage young people in the action first. And then they start asking questions — you start there. You realize that this little insect is actually doing a lot for our environment alone. When you get older, you want to clean up the food. You want to give these insects a utopia where they can thrive. It’s just natural.”
Rodriguez acknowledges that composting can be gross; some kids don’t like the smell. He knows that others might learn in a different way, whether that be reading or watching videos. However, “this opportunity gives them a memorable moment — they’ll never forget it,” he said.
Now, zoom out to the city-wide initiative. DSNY’s program might be farther-reaching, but curbside composting alone may not account for education and peoples’ individual lifestyles. “I don’t see why we would want to limit the amount of opportunities for people to do the right thing. If you give them one way to make a choice for the environment, that might not always fit their schedule, their needs, or their amount of food waste. You gotta make it super easy,” Rodriguez said. BroSis works closely with other microprocessors to distribute food waste, so they can continue to offer space at their drop-off sites.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center was a big name in local compost collection, until their funding was cut this year (like Big Reuse). They are no longer able to take excess food waste from smaller organizations like BroSis — who have been left with overflowing bins. “That limits how many people come to drop it off. That changes the community, the education, and the motivation of people wanting to separate food because they can’t do that each time they want to. We try our best to leave [empty bins] out here as much as possible so that we can continue the process,” Rodriguez explained. The dwindling local impact of these sites has created an apprehension about the lasting impact of such a large program. “For us micro-haulers and microprocessors — if the curbside [program] comes in we lose this,” Rodrigues motions to the kids at work: “If they never do this, when they get older, they will never know or have a reason to separate their food.”
But if they do, they could create a ripple effect. Like cafeteria culture, like Big Reuse, lead by example. Maggie Nunn, a seasoned composter, shares this sentiment. Nunn grew up in Portland, Maine, with a garden and “a lot of land.” However, she didn’t start composting until a pandemic-era curbside service caught the attention of her mother, and then her. She wished she had known earlier. “If this is part of the curriculum, if this is a practice in schools, kids are going to grow up doing it,” she said. Now the children themselves are passionate about it, and the effect goes further. “If you get a kid up there talking about composting, people are like, ‘Yeah, okay, cool! I’ll do it for you,” she imagined. It’s clear that the ease of a curbside program can garner popularity, but how can a lasting impact be created in the human psyche? Education completes the circle.
The October deadline is nigh — Curbside composting will be a weekly expectation for nearly every New Yorker. Maybe you have been reached by the initiatives — maybe you have no idea what’s coming. Either way, the grace period for improper waste separation is going to end, and you’ll get fined for messing up. If all else fails, taking your money might get your attention. It’s a questionable tactic. Jarod Stuyvesant, an Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP) at Weston & Sampson, works to strengthen public advocacy surrounding wastewater treatment initiatives. He sees that imposing fines might not be the first solution to establish compliance, but “at least you have some leverage with the people,” he admitted. He continued: “Imposing fines is a good way to threaten residents. It’s going to be a headache for them, but I think it’s important.”
Stuyvesant isn’t involved in NYC’s curbside composting rollout, but compares their tactics to his own. For one, the pamphlets. While informational, perhaps not so gripping. “If I get a letter, I’m not going to read it unless it seems important. It probably takes ten contact points for someone seeing it to do something,” he explained. If New Yorkers are going to start composting, they need to be hearing about it everywhere. “If Sanitation spreads compost in our parks and puts up signage [saying] ‘this is composted food waste’ people would notice,” he figured. Constant drilling, eventual threatening. Maybe it’s necessary: “What does it really take to have two pails? I don’t see what the big deal is. You learn something from [getting fined]. You probably bitched about it, but you learn,” Spiegel agreed.
The cost of not composting, however, is more than just monetary. “As microprocessors, we just want to have funding availability to go engage and encourage the new generation,” said Rodriguez. “The issue is that New York City Agencies are so focused on ways of making money. Slow, small money is sustainable for a long time,” he continued. And when the goal of such a program should be to make a lasting impact — cleaning the streets, the earth, and the air — there must be embedded education and generational coverage. More than a pamphlet or an info-session. Establishing a system is only the half of it.
Sources Used:
Rhonda Keyser — director or programming / education at cafeteria culture
Nando Rodriguez — community composter / gardener / educator at Brotherhood Sister Sol in Harlem
Sunny Hardyal — intern at big reuse
Joshua Seow — one of last 3 remaining employees of big reuse
Maggie Nunn— longtime composter and cafe manager
Debra Sheintoch — former Director of Compost Programs and Partnerships at NYC Compost Project, current Director of Outreach programs and Partnerships in the Bureau of Public Affairs
Phillip Spiegel — former sanitation worker
Jarod Stuyvesant — Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP) who works in wastewater treatment at Weston & Sampson
Parker Limón — Architectural designer, researcher, artist — Center for Zero Waste Design
Processing and Marketing Recyclables in New York City — Rethinking Economic, Historical, and Comparative Assumptions — Robert Lange, Director — May 2004 — published by DSNY
Myoshi Mitchell — (Background) — Educator, shared experience of recycling rollout (including private recyclers before municipal service), and sentiments about composting rollout
