New York sends around 3.9 million tons of food waste to landfills every year according to Hunter College’s New York City Food Policy Center. On average, that’s 20 million pounds of scraps piling up in landfills each day. This also amounts to the city passing up on 3 million tons of clean soil—an invaluable resource used by the city’s 1,700 parks, 550 community gardens, and 1,890 public schools. These are statistics of 2023, prior to the shutdown of community composting programs in New York. 

Last November, Mayor Eric Adams announced an alteration to NYC’s budgetary plan for 2024, attributing it to a lack of federal funding to accommodate the rising migrant influx. The claim rested on a projected $7 billion budget gap over the next two years. It stated a required reduction of 5% from the funding of all city agencies. This manifested in the significant reduction of resources allocated to social programs, such as the $700 million taken from the Department of Education, the closure of public libraries on Sundays, and the termination of community composting. The Department of Sanitation’s proposed cuts total $32 million, of which $3 million account for the community composting program—around .16% of their $1.82 billion overall budget. 

The North Brooklyn Compost Project is a volunteer-run organization that provides composting resources to the communities of Greenpoint and East Williamsburg. After gathering 346,565 pounds of food waste over three years, their efforts have been on hold since last December. 

Started by Greenpoint residents in June of 2020, the initiative gave the surrounding communities resources to continue composting when COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns shut down collection and processing sites. “We wanted to create a way for people to continue composting because it’s a habit that’s built over time; its disappearance would make it difficult for people to go back to it,” said founding member Katie Zwick. “It was a web of many generous neighbors sharing their time and vehicles to help us transport scraps... At the beginning, it was very DIY—collecting scraps, throwing them in a Zipcar, and driving them out to Astoria to pass them to a hauler.” As word spread, the project came to enlist 200 active volunteers and collect scraps from around 400 local residents per week. Lena Frey, a longtime team member, recalled the sense of community that weekly meets fostered between neighbors. “I have personally witnessed old friends run into each other for the first time in months at the compost site and have these wonderful conversations,” they said. 

Programs began to reopen later in 2020, and the NBK Compost Project officially developed a processing partnership with Big Reuse, a Brooklyn-based environmental nonprofit. This allowed the project to use their trucks and processing sites to drop off the community’s scraps more efficiently. “The partnership with Big Reuse was so vital,” Zwick said. “It allowed all the scraps to be processed in New York City, and then also returned to our communities. None of that compost is sold—it's donated through free giveaways to schools, community gardens, and parks who need free soil.”

Big Reuse was among eight composting initiatives that lost city funding after last fall, rendering their processing sites and outreach programs inoperable. This entailed the layoff of 115 paid staff members across these composting teams. The lack of these resources put the NBK Compost Project on hold.

Frey was also on the composting team of Grow NYC, an environmental nonprofit that did not suffer a complete budgetary elimination. “I was one of the employees that was presumably going to be laid off. We all got notices less than seven days before our employment would be terminated,” they said. “It ended up being salvaged by an anonymous private donor on our end. We shouldn't rely on benefactors to do what city services are supposed to do with our tax dollars.” Despite this anonymous donation, Grow NYC is now set to shut down its operations by May 20th.

With the announcement of the cuts came a call to action from the organizations and communities. Since November, countless rallies have mobilized to demonstrate public demand for the return of these social resources, many with the outspoken support of city council members. A rally by the Grow NYC Workers Collective on December 6th saw public speeches expressing support from more than a dozen council members. An online petition, which included all NYC compost initiatives, was published, urging the administration to restore the allocation. The petition has currently garnered 49,711 signatures of its goal of 51,000 and is still open to the public. Its completion is among the ongoing public efforts that would aid the case of community composting at upcoming oversight hearings.

 In recent weeks, the Parks Department announced the eviction of Big Reuse from their main processing site under the Queensboro bridge. This would mark the end of the organization If they are unsuccessful in combating the site’s closure by June. An online petition has also launched on their website to garner support in these efforts. 

Mayor Adams is set to lead renegotiations of the cuts in March, at which time the city council will present their proposed addendum. The NBK team says that hope for the future of the community composting program lies in such meetings, and sufficient community outreach is vital to passing forth the notion. “It should not be the responsibility of individuals to prop up city services that the administration should be funding as a priority,” Zwick said. “Being vocal about those priorities is a critical way to get council members to fight for the interests of your community.” 

One thing is certain regarding the future of community composting and all programs affected by the administration’s reprioritization—their return depends on the public word. Silence in the face of such decisions being taken from the hands of voters lends itself to a dangerous precedent.

About Nikolas-Kaan Yilmaz

Nikolas Yilmaz is a Turkish-Bulgarian writer and musician based in Brooklyn. He is currently the editorial intern at MOTIF, an editor at Rambler Magazine, and composes for multiple recording and touring projects. Yilmaz has been organizing, performing, and documenting NYC cultural events since 2019.