New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently announced budget cuts that include the elimination of funding for community composting programs. In response, a coalition of community groups is invigorating its base to keep these initiatives alive.
The New York City Compost Project is a partnership between the City of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) and community organizations. The organizations include GrowNYC, Lower East Side (LES) Ecological Center, Big Reuse, and Earth Matter, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Queens Botanical Garden, Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, and The New York Botanical Garden. Operating 75 compost sites in all five boroughs, the Program provides education and composting opportunities for City residents.
Earth Matter, a New York City-based community and environmental organization, has received funding from the city to facilitate the NYC Compost Project. Earth Matter “makes compost using people’s food scraps to be put back onto the green infrastructure that New York City is so proud to invest in,” Marissa DeDominicis, the organization’s Executive Director, tells Food Tank.
But the ability of organizations like Earth Matter to operate is at risk. The proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 includes cuts to DSNY that will lead to the defunding of the NYC Compost Project. According to composting advocates, these changes will lead to a loss of jobs and the closing down of drop-off sites.
Since the announcement, community groups released a petition to reinstate community composting programs, which now has more than 50,000 signatures. GrowNYC, an organization that receives city funding to operate 52 compost drop-off sites throughout the city, is the original author behind it. In 2022 alone, the organization diverted almost 2.7 million pounds of food scraps from landfills to compost, according to its website.
Immediately following the Mayor’s announcement, GrowNYC reports that they were preparing to lay off employees within their composting programs. For now, an anonymous donor has enabled their composting work to continue through June 2024, but layoffs may be imminent.
Other organizations are searching for, and in some cases successfully identifying, similar funding streams. Mill Industries Inc. and Friends and community members recently announced a donation to LES Botanical Garden, Earth Matter, BigReuse, and GrowNYC so that these organizations can also continue their composting work.
DeDominicis tells Food Tank that Earth Matter is also working with city councilors to push for the restoration of funding and is hoping for additional funds by the beginning of the next fiscal year in July.
In response to criticism, DSNY points out that New York City is expanding their citywide curbside compost collection. It is projected to be the “nation’s largest and easiest curbside composting program, picking up compostable material from every resident on their recycling day and putting that material to beneficial use,” a DSNY spokesperson tells Food Tank.
The Department currently collects compost in Brooklyn and Queens and by October 2024, they are planning to serve the remaining boroughs. New Yorkers can also compost food scraps in the Smart Composting bins that are located around the city.
DeDominicis tells Food Tank that these bins don’t turn food scraps into soil. She explains that the city transports the waste to facilities that turn scraps into biogas, creating non-compostable slurry as a byproduct, also according to an investigation by Curbed. Smart Bins are also predominantly available in Manhattan and Brooklyn. But community compost drop-off sites, meanwhile, are set up in all corners of the city for greater reach.
DeDominicis also argues that the NYC Compost Project provides an important connection to the community. According to Natural Resources Defense Council research, 40 percent of the American food supply goes to waste. To limit food waste, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends that before throwing food away in a landfill, people should compost it. But, DeDominicis notes that composting is a “lifestyle change.”
Earth Matter sees itself as both a community compost site and a classroom and the organization believes that “as people learn how to compost, they become the advocates, they become the educators, and they go back into their communities,” DeDominicis says.
“People can come to Earth Matter, actually see their food scraps…[and] the transformation into black gold,” DeDominicis tells Food Tank. She believes that the composting site is a place for New Yorkers to learn about where their food waste goes, “making people feel like they belong to a movement, and what they do is a basic act that can make change.”
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Photo by Charles Bayrer, courtesy of Earth Matter
