Mandatory Composting in New York? It Could Happen A proposal would make organic waste recycling available to all, then eventually require it. Critics say it would be expensive.

New York Times ^ | March 12, 2020 | Anne Barnard

[karpov]

Millions of New Yorkers may soon need to separate scraps of fruit, vegetables and meat into separate garbage receptacles every time they cook and do dishes — learning another new habit just as they did with plastics recycling in the 1980s and are now doing under a recent ban on plastic shopping bags.

The City Council speaker is calling for organic waste recycling, also known as composting, to be available — and eventually mandatory — for all New York City residents, in an effort to reduce exports to landfills and emissions of planet-warming gases.

The proposal, announced on Thursday by the speaker, Corey Johnson, comes on the heels of sharp criticism of the city’s recycling program. New York recycles less than 20 percent of the 3.1 million tons of garbage that its residents produce each year, a number well below other major cities.

More than a third of residential waste consists of food waste and yard refuse, organic materials that could be separated out, composted and turned into fertilizers or biogas, city officials say.

But seven years after the city introduced curbside pickup of organic waste, less than half the population has the option to request the voluntary program’s brown recycling bins. In the neighborhoods where bins are available, just 10 percent of residents use them.

If the plan is approved in the coming months, its implementation would roll out over several years, much as plastics and glass recycling did in the 1980s. The city would first make bins available everywhere and educate the public about what goes in them, and later make their use mandatory.

Skeptics say mandatory composting could be prohibitively expensive. In 2016, the nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission concluded that separate collection of organics would cost New York between $177 million and $251 million annually.

[Romans Nine]

I vote for mandatory composting toilets in city hall. The five gallon bucket homemade style.

[cweese]

"Yeah. That won’t draw any bugs....."

The City of Austin dropped off small green composting bins for every resident last fall. I suspect once the hot temps arrive these bins are going to be swarming with pestilence of all kinds.

[Wuli]

That’s right, that’s all a crowded big city needs (to spread disease) is city-wide composting!!!!

New York City rats, already in the millions, will become the largest population in the city, outnumbering the people many times over. (Do you really think that with their sense of smell and smarts they will not figure out how to get in the bins with the organic waste??)

Then you have the matter of how the matter in the landfill eventually gets broken down. THAT is a process that organic waste contributes to, and without that organic waste what is put in the landfill will be intact for a longer time. Yes, organic waste decomposition in a landfill does create methane, but modern methods have been devised to trap the methane being exhaled from a landfill.

[Bonemaker]

“...The City Council speaker is calling for organic waste recycling...”

How about a huge load of horse “organic waste” on your driveway schmuck?

[hal ogen]

Leftists are lunatics. The only way this might be positive for society would be if leftists were thrown into the composting mass.