Timely Message From The Roosevelt Island Haki Compost Collective: Understanding Residential Options to Dispose of Organic Food Scrap Waste - Take Your Food Scraps To Haki For Composting At The Motorgate Plaza Every Saturday 9 AM To 2 PM
According to the Roosevelt Island Haki Compost Collective:
The month of April celebrates Earth Day and also heralds mandatory requirements to NYC’s residential building’s food scrap waste disposal rules. The good news is residents have lots of options however understanding the true end use of your food scraps can be unclear.
Haki Compost Collective, a local grassroots group of volunteers supporting community composting efforts in partnership with the Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) and Big Reuse, put together an easy to understand comparative sheet for residents.
We invite you to stop by any Saturday year round at Motorgate plaza near Foodtown from 9 am to 2 pm with your food scraps or questions. A volunteer will be at the green bins.
Have a look at the poster below to better understand the difference between the City's orange and brown bins initiative and Roosevelt Island's Haki Composting Collective.
Haki/Big Reuse composting initiative:
- Big Reuse picks up our plant-based foods and turns them into soil as compost by a natural process.
- NO global warming methane gas is produced.
NYC composting program (orange & brown bins):
- Kitchen scraps are treated as sewage and digested as biogas (methane gas) for energy to power the Newtown Creek Wastewater facility.
- A percentage of that methane is extra and flared into the air. The flared methane is a pollutant much worse than carbon dioxide and has a lifespan of over a decade.
- A bi-product of this process (sludge) is sent to landfill as it is not suitable for farmers due to the plastic bags within and important nutrients don't get returned to the ground.
This is NOT composting but is not as damaging as sending organic scraps to landfill which emit methane gas. Composting means turning food scraps into compost (a nutrient-rich soil amendment).
Compost is water absorbing which helps reduce flooding during storms or flooding events when added to city soils. It also is nutrient-rich which reinvigorates depleted soils and feeds trees and flowers.
If you wish to help the environment best, take your plant-based food scraps (including egg shells) to the green Haki bins by Foodtown at Motorgate Plaza year round on Saturdays from 9am and 2pm.
If you want, you can put your animal-based food scraps into the orange and brown bins for methane gas capture.
The week of April 7-13th is Food Waste Prevention Week.
So let’s eat more of the food in our fridge, waste less by making soups with scraps and take any remaining food scraps to the green bins each Saturday at Motorgate from 9 am to 2 pm.
New to composting? Collect for a few days at the end of the week and drop off to us every Saturday at Motorgate Plaza from 9 AM to 2 PM. Your actions matter and whichever method you choose we wish you to know the outcome and your impact.
Here's a December 2024 interview with volunteers from the Roosevelt Island Haki Compost Collective.
