Composting

Mayor Eric Adams has suspended the expansion of residential composting programs.

The mayor said he would expand collection of food and yard scraps when he was running. Now he's cutting the city's collection program.

The pilot program has sparked confusion from some New Yorkers and earned mixed reviews from sustainability experts.

Buildings must opt-in to the program, and anyone who didn’t have curbside pickup before the pandemic still won’t.

By 2017, the program was serving 300,000 households, 722 schools, agencies and institutions, and 80 drop-off points. In 2019, the city collected 50,000 tons of compostables from curbside service alone. What happened?

"The whole point here is to get the city better prepared, better organized around organic recycling and make sure that every community has access to it."

'It's been a low priority for City Hall... You can't under-fund and under-nourish the organics program and call your city a believer in sustainability. It just doesn't make sense.'

Only about 3 percent of the organics waste produced by residents in the program is getting recycled.

800 and 900 tons of trash is processed every 24 hours.

Neighborhoods getting composting include Williamsburg, Woodside, Long Island City and Fieldston.

The true test of your commitment to fighting the drumbeat of global warming is how amenable we are to adjusting to small but meaningful changes in our everyday lives.

"It smells like dirty diapers and vomit all up and down the block, and the smell lingers for days," one resident said.