According to the New York Times, which first reported the plan on June 16, New York will soon announce that it will soon hire a composting plant capable of handling 100,000 tons of food scraps per year—about 10% of the city’s residential food waste. And city hall will soon seek proposals to build another plant that will process food waste into biogas, to be burned for electricity. But the real news is that soon enough, New Yorkers will likely be required—under pain of fine—separate out food scraps for curbside pickup, just as they do now (or are supposed to do) for plastics, glass and paper.
150,000 single-family homes—which do indeed exist in New York City—will begin a pilot program next year, along with 100 apartment buildings. New York has already tried a similar pilot program out on Staten Island—home to single-family houses in the city—and has seen success rates of nearly 50%. Food waste and organics account for about a third of residential trash in New York, and the city claims that it could save about $100 million a year by recycling it, chiefly by using it as fertilizer or for biogas.
New York won’t be the first city to try municipal food recycling. Toronto, Portland, Seattle and countless other cities have experimented with wide-scale composting, with San Francisco—the first city to do so—collecting more than 1 million tons of organic waste since the program was begun more than 16 years ago. Combined with recycling, that’s allowed the city to divert more than 80% of total waste generated each year from landfills.
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