by Benjamin Long
On a soggy Saturday morning on the Upper East Side, Moises Enriquez ties up another black bag filled with New York residents’ food scraps. His hands slip on the wet plastic as the ripe smell of cabbage leaves and carrot cut-offs fills the damp air. Saturdays on 82nd Street have become something of a ritual for Enriquez, and he smiles at the familiar faces who gift him with their scraps.
“This is a growing entity of how we want people to compost,” says Enriquez. “But we could be doing much more.”
Enriquez, 24, is a volunteer with GrowNYC’s Zero Waste Program, having worked with the organization for around a year. The drop-off point he works at is one of twenty participating GreenMarkets in Manhattan (there are 42 across the five boroughs) and on average Enriquez collects around 2 tonnes of food scraps per week at his station.
Interactive Map: GrowNYC’s Manhattan Food Scrap Drop-Off Locations
Such food scraps include fruit and vegetable waste, non-greasy food items (rice, pasta, bread, cereal etc.), and egg and nut shells. The drop-off points do not accept any meat, fish, dairy, oil or grease-based scraps. Nor do they accept general waste like coffee cups or napkins, much to the disappointment of several passersby who were in search of a trash can.
However, Manhattan is lagging behind other boroughs when it comes to the effective disposal of its organic waste. According to the Department of Sanitation, in February this month, only 0.49% of the 2102 tonnes of refuse collected on Manhattan’s curbs was organic material. This compares to 0.73% in Queens and 0.53% in both Brooklyn and Staten Island. The Bronx only came in at 0.21% of its 1816.9 tonnes collected in February.
Video Interview: GrowNYC’s David Gaul at West 79th Street Composting Drop-Off
Erik Hoversten, Operations Coordinator at Big Reuse – New York City’s only non-profit retail outlets for salvaged and surplus building materials – recognizes that composting food scraps isn’t the first thing that comes to residents’ mind.
“A lot of compostable material heads to the landfills in New York,” states Hoversten. “But when we make people aware of the issues, they tend to respond positively.”
The West 79th Street & Columbus Avenue drop-off site is one of GrowNYC’s busiest – filling, on average, twenty-three of these fifty gallon bins with food scraps.
Big Reuse has an active outreach team that promotes urban composting practices. They host volunteer work days at their compost processing site under the Queensboro bridge as well as other events around Western Queens and Northern Brooklyn. So why the void in Manhattan?
“A lot of the building managers in the city go for the cheapest option,” says Dave Gaul, GrowNYC’s Compost Program Regional Coordinator. “Although the option is there for organic waste collection, not many places are taking them.”
Indeed, nowhere in Manhattan has a compulsory rule set in place for the use of brown bins, compared to certain neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. This comes after a law was passed in 2013 by the New York City Council “testing the efficacy and cost-efficiency of the curbside collection and processing of organic material” in New York. Manhattan wasn’t included in the pilot. Although the Department of Sanitation is expanding their services to include all New Yorkers by the end of 2018, there are no future expansions planned in Manhattan according to their March press release.
Food scraps can be collected in covered plastic containers, paper bags, plastic bags, milk cartons or even frozen to reduce odors at home.
Ezekiel Jiles, 23 and an avid composter, always makes sure to attend the drop-off point on 82nd Street every Saturday.
“It’s not much, but at least I’m doing something,” starts Jiles. “But when I see all the food waste in the trash along the streets…”
Jiles has tried to persuade his neighbors to follow suit, and to some success. However, their options are limited to the drop-off sites scattered across Manhattan. GrowNYC are promising 18 more locations during the Summer, most of which are in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx to try and tackle the lack of facilities available in the area.
“I couldn’t imagine traveling twenty or thirty blocks to compost,” says Jiles. “I’m lucky that I get to live so close, but for those where drop-off spots are nowhere near I would probably just dump it in the trash.”
David Gaul (left) speaks with a composter about the eighteen new drop-off locations planned for Northern Manhattan and the Bronx.
The food-scraps collected are taken to the several compost sites located in New York and are processed into soil to be used on urban farms and gardening projects. In 2015, the average cost of processing the compost was $113 per ton, with the pilot cost growing from $4.6 million in its first year of practice to $13.07 million in its second year. An additional school program cost a further $1.61m but efficiency will come with more participation across the boroughs.
“It’s just getting the message out there,” says Enriquez as he loads the green bins onto the truck. “The more people who see us, the more we can put in their head that there are options out there in Manhattan to compost.”