By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
The sealed brown garbage cans have arrived, and organic waste recycling is now mandated for residents in all five boroughs. The Sanitation Department is hard at work picking up that waste. The only problem is that most New Yorkers are ignoring the law. Most New Yorkers are throwing out their residential organic waste with the rest of their household garbage. The brown cans are rarely full. Samantha MacBride of Baruch College’s Marx School of Public and International Affairs and former research chief of the city’s Sanitation Department has published the most comprehensive studies of the city’s effort to recycle organic waste. Her work carefully measures what she has termed the organic waste “capture rate.” Many studies of waste management measure the amount of waste diverted from landfills that is then used productively. However, according to MacBride:
“The capture rate goes further: it is specific to materials, or groups of materials, as opposed to waste flows in total. Three basic ingredients are needed to calculate an organics capture rate: organics tonnages, refuse tonnages, and waste composition percentages. Tonnages of collected organics that people have dutifully separated and set out for collection are in the numerator. The denominator has that same tonnage, plus an estimate of the unseparated organics that people leave, incorrectly, in the trash.”
New York City first began curbside residential organic waste pick-up in Queens and Brooklyn a few years before city-wide pick-up began in October of 2024. MacBride’s analysis indicates that the program has been slow to take hold. As MacBride reports:
“Calculating the capture rate in areas currently served by curbside organics collection shows that while the citywide capture rate for organics was 3.7% in FY2024, yard trimmings had a higher capture rate of 16.2%... In contrast, food scraps showed a very low rate of 1.2%, and compostable paper/packaging rates are essentially zero.”
MacBride’s conclusion is that we should be transparent about the low rate of compliance and that New York City should be honest about the rate of poor participation. Government and environmental advocates, as well as educators like me, must do a better job of explaining the program to New Yorkers. I agree with her analysis and conclusion. It is very important that we do a better job of explaining the environmental damage caused by dumping food waste in a landfill. First, it generates methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Second, it contributes to toxics leaking out of landfills and contaminating our groundwater supply of drinking water. In contrast, recycled organic waste generates fertilizer that is needed to grow crops and biogas that can power our electric grid without fossil fuel.
To separate food waste, residents of New York City need to either maintain a sealed garbage can within their home or keep the food waste in a sealed container in a refrigerator or freezer. Every few days, they then bring the waste to their building’s (or their own in private homes) sealed brown bin for pick up by the Department of Sanitation. This is extra work for busy and often stressed-out New Yorkers, and so far, they remain either unconvinced it’s worth the effort or possibly ignorant of the new law and the environmental benefits it will bring. New York is not a pioneer in organic recycling, and we could learn from California, which has been at it a lot longer. In a recent post on Canary Media, Keaton Peters wrote that:
“In 2016, California passed a comprehensive compost law calling for a 75 percent reduction in 2014 levels of organic waste at landfills by 2025. Now, as that deadline arrives, the latest available data suggests that California is falling far short of that goal. A study released in June by CalRecycle, the state agency overseeing implementation of SB 1383, found that from 2014 to 2021, the annual amount of organic waste sent to landfills fell by only two million tons, from 21 million to 19 million.”
What we should learn from California is that changing behavior is difficult, and there are limits to the success of waste recycling. That does not mean we should abandon the effort. Over the next decade or so, organic waste recycling makes enormous sense. This is because the market for the products that organic waste can produce is real and could, at some point, generate revenue. Anaerobic digestion and composting are technologies that now exist, and biogas and fertilizer have economic value. Educating the public about the steps involved in organic recycling should not be difficult. The city could also enforce the “mandatory” element of the program in a few years and utilize a stick along with the recycled carrot.
In the long run, however, I am not optimistic about separating waste at its source. We’ve worked on recycling for a long time, and while there are some success stories (such as aluminum), the market for recycled waste is uneven, and stories about waste stream contamination are common. Eventually, we will need to invest in high-technology waste separation during waste processing. Using artificial intelligence, sensors, screens, and automation, we should mine the mixed waste stream for all the valuable resources it carries. Metals, paper, plastics, chemicals, and organic matter will be removed from the waste stream for processing and sale. Instead of mining the planet for resources, we will mine our garbage. While this technology is not yet commercially viable, it is under development. The capital costs of these facilities would be funded in part by forgone waste tipping fees and lower waste transport costs.
In the near term, a focus on organic recycling provides immediate environmental and cost benefits. But the cost benefits are significantly compromised if the capture rate remains low. Half-full organic waste pick-up trucks reduce the cost-effectiveness of the program. In addition, infrastructure must be funded and built to utilize any increase in organic waste recycling. The biogas from anaerobic digestion can be utilized by our electric utilities to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. But these facilities must be funded, sited, and built, and thus far, the digesters built in New York City have been attached to sewage treatment plants. In December 2024, on the Common Edge website, Jack Crager asked, “Why is New York City’s Mandatory Composting Program so Invisible,” and he noted that “[a]bout 80% of the organic material collected by the NYDS goes to sewage-treatment plants, where it’s anaerobically treated.”
Many environmentalists prefer composting to anaerobic digestion, but if participation is as high as we’d like, we would quickly outgrow the local need for compost and would then be saddled with the high cost of recycled organic waste transport. In my view, anaerobic digestion on a large scale makes the most sense for cities like New York. But clearly, a prerequisite for investment in infrastructure must be a higher capture rate. Quoting MacBride, Crager observes that:
“While individual behavior is key, the success rate for the curbside compost program will hinge on the participation of buildings, where education and outreach should be intensified… Such efforts are ultimately intertwined with enforcement of the program…All of this will require major groundwork at the building level: How’s the recycling, garbage and organics room set up? What kind of bags line the receptacles? Does the porter have to carry an organics bin upstairs? Where’s the set-out area? Are there signs on every floor in the building telling people where to take their organics? Has educational material been handed out? Has each tenant received a kitchen container for use in their home?”
The slow start of organic waste recycling is not an entirely bad development. First, New Yorkers, like most Americans, don’t like being told what to do. Organic recycling may be “mandatory,” but the fastest way for our politically timid City Council to make it optional would be to force it on unwilling New Yorkers. We need to convince the public that organic waste recycling is a good idea and worthy of their effort. We need to build support for voluntary compliance and focus enforcement on those landlords unwilling to cooperate after years of warnings. Education is key. When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I remember the anti-litter campaign, which included thousands of signs that said: “A cleaner New York is up to you.” And while it didn’t end littering, it significantly reduced it. Let’s develop an equally effective campaign for recycling organic waste.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
