A guest post by Camille Diamond
“New York is the greenest community in the United States. The most devastating damage that humans have done to the environment has arisen from the burning of fossil fuels, a category in which New Yorkers are practically prehistoric by comparison with other Americans.” –David Owen, Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability
Let’s begin by owning that as a city we’re already doing a surprisingly good job of keeping our footprint low by simply living here, driving less, being close by to where we want to go, and walking more. But as a New York City parent, I barely have time to do the laundry—and I know you probably don’t either. So we shouldn’t feel guilty about not having the time to do certain things, like composting. That being said, it’s surprisingly easy to do!
If you didn’t already know, NYC garbage is transported to landfills outside of the state. Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey all have landfills full of old clothes, packaging, paper, the contents of our last closet purge, and lots and lots of food waste. This last one is the most unfortunate kind though, because food was meant to compost back into the earth and enrich the soil for the next growing cycle. If we can keep food out of landfills and find a way to send it back to the soil, we’re giving our future food the opportunity to be at least as nutritious as the food that came before it. It’s a simple concept; however, when you live in a city where backyard gardens and opportunities to compost are scarce, it seems like the only option for our food waste is to throw it into the landfill with the rest of the garbage.
This is exactly why we’re taking action at the 14th Street Y, a Jewish community center in the East Village. We’ve been composting within the building for about a year (afterschool snacks and banana peels now have a different place to go than the trash can!), and in March we began a community composting pilot—an opportunity for our members and patrons to drop off their food waste.
Like composting itself, the concept is simple. After signing up, New Yorkers are asked to save all their food waste; this includes the usual stuff like fruits, vegetables, peelings and cores, but also meat, bones, grains, dairy, even wooden chopsticks and paper takeout containers. Locals bring their food waste in used milk cartons or paper bags, both of which are compostable, or in compostable bio bags. We use a waste hauling company, IESI, to take the compostables to a plant where they’re processed into composting soil and made available to local farms. It’s been amazing to see how many people will compost when there are sustainable ways of doing so. We made a goal to divert 1 ton of food from landfill by Earth Day 2013, which we just recently achieved.
If you’re looking to get into composting yourself, there are other options available. Every composting program has a list of what they can and can’t take, so please make sure you double check before dropping off your compost.
NYC Greenmarkets have drop-off programs for organic food waste, and it’s easy to remember to bring your food waste when you’re going to purchase more fresh, local food for your family. grownyc.org
There are experts in composting at the Lower East Side Ecology Center. They can show you how to do your own composting…with worms! lesecologycenter.org
Vokashi is a home composting service that lets you compost in your own kitchen with a special fermentation process in an odorless bucket. Then, they pick it up! vokashi.com
You can get involved with your local schools by creating and registering a school garden with Grow to Learn. Composting can be a great part of tending a garden and an opportunity for children to compost and learn together. growtolearn.org
Finally, if you’d like to start a community composting project like we did at the 14th Street Y, please let us know. We’ll put you in touch with the right people and cheer you on from our downtown corner in the East Village. For more about our program, visit 14Streety.org/compost or contact me at [email protected]
Camille Diamond is Director of Community Engagement and Communications at 14 Street Y.
