Curbside Composting In Queens Goes Borough-Wide Starting In Fall

NEW YORK CITY — A new borough-wide program in Queens will help show that city-run curbside composting isn't a waste of resources, Mayor Eric Adams said.

Adams announced Monday that all Queens residents will receive weekly collection of yard waste, food scraps and food-soiled paper products starting in the fall.

The composting program, which begins Oct. 3, will be free and doesn't require sign-ups — all New Yorkers have to do is put their yard and food waste in separate bags and bins with sealed lids, which they can order from the city, Adams said.

"This is a no-frill way of just getting it done without the bureaucracy,” he said.

The Queens composting program will be the largest in the nation — and represent another bite at the apple, so to speak, for the city's efforts to curb (literally) food waste.

Adams had suspended a city-wide composting program started by his predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio. He tasked sanitation officials with finding a cheaper way to run the program, which is what led to the announcement Monday in front of The Unisphere in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

The program will shut down from December to March because there's almost no yard waste — which is primarily what is being composted when such programs begin, Adams said — during those months.

Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the program will be run with less than half the cost of previous programs — and won't leave food scraps behind.

“The program is designed to take the organic material out of the black bags and instead set in rat-proof bins,” she said. “Gone will be the nightly rat feast.”

Out of the 24 million pounds of residential trash and recycling that New Yorkers place on curbs every day, about 8 million pounds is organic waste, Tisch said.

Queens residents can use their own bins for the program, or order a brown one online for free until Oct. 1 at nyc.gov/curbsidecomposting, officials said.

Compostable materials of all types will go to a composting facility in Queens, where it will be turned into soil that the city sells or donates to landscaping and community programs, as well as parks, Tisch said.

The facility also captures greenhouse gases that are emitted as organic material breaks down, she said.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards noted the near-100 degree temperatures outside as they unveiled the composting program.

“Thanks to this expansion, a huge amount of our borough’s waste will be diverted away from landfills, where it would have been left to decay into methane, a harmful greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming,” he said.