Curbside compost coming to Queens
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By Rachel Vick
Queens gets the compost.
Beginning Oct. 3, all residential buildings in Queens will automatically get weekly compost and organic waste collection from the Department of Sanitation, Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday.
Following years of stalled pilot composting programs, Queens’ impending program will be the first borough-wide composting effort made by the city.
“Starting this fall, we’re bringing guaranteed, weekly curbside composting to the entire borough of Queens — taking action to keep our streets clean and simultaneously fight climate change,” Adams said. “This launch makes New York City home to the largest curbside composting program.”
“So many of these [Queens] neighborhoods deserve the environmental justice,” he added.
Pickups will include leaf and yard waste, food scraps and food-soiled paper products to be composted — instead of being sent to landfills, producing the greenhouse gas methane while it decomposes.
Department of Sanitation Commissioner Jessica Tisch celebrated the program as a win in the fight to shut down the “all you can eat buffet for rats” among the 24 million pounds of trash left curbside each day, and the planned efficiency of both DSNY collections and ease of participation.
“We hope it will be… one that people will actually use,” Tisch said. “For organics to work it needs to penetrate beyond the true believers. Our trucks will roll to every address in Queens, once a week — period.”
The borough’s program is expected to cost less than half the amount of previous programs through efforts to find efficient routing and manpower solutions, according to Tisch. Unlike earlier compost program rollouts, the borough-wide collection will not require signups.
To garner participation from larger buildings, Tisch encouraged residents to reach out to building managers about how to participate — emphasizing that they will be receiving the bins whether they want them or not.
Simplifying access to bins and cutting back on bureaucracy was a direct response of hesitant participation in the pilot program.
“I've never been more excited to talk trash,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. “We in this borough know immediate and decisive action has to be taken to address this crisis before more lives are lost unnecessarily.”
Collection schedule information will be available on DSNY’s composting website by mid-September, an old DSNY-issued brown bin or a lidded, labeled bin of their own.
DSNY will deliver bins to residential buildings with 10 or more units over the next month and residents of single family homes who need a compost bin may order one online for free until Oct. 1 at nyc.gov/curbsidecomposting.
