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.
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.
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.
Hi Haki Compost Collective family, droppers and supporters,
We had a picture perfect day last Saturday October 5th to kick off the first
Saturday back serving the Roosevelt Island community after a ten month
hiatus.
Nearly 70 neighbors dropped off their organics to our green bins and we
collected 454 pounds of food scraps that will be processed into compost with
the return of longtime compost partners Big Reuse. In spring compost will
return to our urban soils including island landscape, tree pits, gardens and
even house plants.
We wish to thank the
Lenape Center for
giving us the name Haki and all the neighbors who stopped by to express the
joy of our return. It feels good to have a healthy option and divert
valuable material from going to landfill.
We will be at the Motorgate Plaza every Saturday from 9 am to 2 pm year
round. Please stop by to find out more. Haki Compost Collective volunteers
will be on hand to answer questions, tell you more about volunteer
opportunities and of course collect your food scraps.
Please spread the word and share these flyers and tips on what to drop-off
with your neighbors.
And Save the Date for the 10/20 Compost Carnival at Battery Park.
See you at the green bins soon,
Corinna & Christina (Haki Compost Collective volunteers)
... New York City Department of Sanitation is also launching a new composting
initiative citywide, and Roosevelt Island buildings will be included in the
program. DSNY will be delivering composting bins to each building, and
residents will be able to discard food scraps and food-soiled paper in those
bins, which will then be transported to a larger composting container in the
AVAC yard. DSNY will then collect the food scraps weekly and transport them to
a composting facility in Staten Island. Please reach out to your building
management for more information on when your building will be receiving its
collection bin. To learn more, please visit the DSNY Composting
site.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York City Department of Sanitation
(DSNY) Commissioner Jessica Tisch today announced the completion of the
roll-out of automatic, guaranteed, free, simple, weekly collection of
compostable material to every New Yorker across the five boroughs. When
trucks left DSNY garages serving the Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan
just after 5:00 AM today, they were making good on a promise that the past
administration had made for over a decade. That promise was long derided as
impossible, but Mayor Adams committed to making it a reality in his 2023
State of the City address. This program, which began in Queens in the fall
of 2022 and expanded to Brooklyn in the fall of 2023, is now permanent and
offered citywide — something achieved with a focus on sustainability,
cleanliness, equity, and efficiency.
“It’s simple: when food scraps end up in black bags on the street, they
become rat food or methane emissions. said Mayor Adams. “Starting today,
curbside composting is free and pain-free on every block and in every
borough — something prior administrations have tried, but we got it done.
I’m grateful to Commissioner Tisch and the dedicated sanitation workers who
work day-in, day-out to make this program possible and keep our streets
clean for New Yorkers.”....
Trucks are rolling out in the Bronx (and Manhattan & Staten Island)!
Starting this week, ALL residents now have access to the nation's
largest and easiest curbside compost program. Collect your food & yard
waste, put it in a bin, and set it out on your recycling day.
pic.twitter.com/iw5sxDSDDU
DSNY
Commissioner Jessica Tisch described the new
CurbsideComposting program
during a September 25, 2024 roundtable presentation to the NYC Ethnic &
Community media.
I asked Commissioner Tisch:
... do you have any metrics on how program has worked so far in the boroughs
and will the program be working on Roosevelt Island?
Commissioner Tisch answered:
Yes. So let me start with the Roosevelt Island question and then we'll turn
to numbers.
Absolutely the program will work on Roosevelt Island and on Roosevelt Island
it will be slightly different than the way the rest of the City Works. The
compost on Roosevelt Island will be handled the exact same way that
recycling is handled on Roosevelt Island so again it will be set out on your
recycling day. It is then taken to a centralized location where we then come
and collect....
I also asked:
On Roosevelt Island I think we have three or four of the composting bins. I've
been trying to get statistics on the use of those bins on either a weekly or
monthly basis but haven't been able to do that yet. Is that possible?
and:
Are there metrics on compliance rates by Property Owners.
Commissioner Tisch answered:
... Yes we can get that information to you absolutely. You're asking for the
one specifically on Roosevelt Island, Yes we can get that to you....
... In terms of data ... last year to give you a sense, we diverted 260
million pounds of organic material...
In regard to compliance rates by property owners, Commissioner Tisch said:
... not yet and the reason why not yet is because we have not yet begun
our enforcement of organic waste separation. As I mentioned earlier that
will begin in the spring of 2025 and the idea there is as I mentioned before
we want to give all New Yorkers, all 8.3 million New Yorkers, an opportunity
to develop the muscle memory to learn how they're going to start separating
their food and yard waste before we start any meaningful enforcement and
once enforcement starts then we will have more data around compliance and or
lack of compliance....
Here's video of the full NYC Curbside Composting roundtable.
Shortly afterwards, a DSNY spokesperson reported:
You had asked about the use of Smart Composting Bins on Roosevelt Island.
From the start of 2024 through the end of September, the bin at River Road
was opened 4,199 times, the bin at West Road was opened 1,194 times, and the
bin by the tram was opened 4,208 times.
I followed up:
Do you have info on the amount by weight collected in each bin too?
The DSNY spokesperson replied:
We do not weigh the contents of each bin each time we empty it. Also, many
of our Smart Composting Bins are collected on the same trucks that pick up
compostable material from schools, so we do not have weight data specific to
the Smart Composting Bins.
I asked:
Do you keep any metrics on the smart bins other than number of openings?
If you do, what are they for the Roosevelt Island bins?
DSNY spokesperson replied:
The number of opens is our primary metric for measuring smart bin use.
More info on the
DSNY Curbside Compost Program and Haki Comost Collective Roosevelt Island Saturday Food Scrap Drop Off
collection site.
Roosevelt Island is a mixed income, racially diverse waterfront community situated in the East River of New York City between Manhattan and Queens and is jurisdictionally part of Manhattan. The Roosevelt Island Tramway, which connects Roosevelt Island to the rest of Manhattan, has become the iconic symbol of Roosevelt Island to its residents.
The Purpose of this Blog is to provide accurate and timely information about Roosevelt Island as well as a forum for residents to express opinions and engage in a dialogue to improve our community.
