The New York City Compost Project is a partnership between the City of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) and community organizations. The organizations include GrowNYC, Lower East Side (LES) Ecological Center, Big Reuse, and Earth Matter, Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Queens Botanical Garden, Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, and The New York Botanical Garden. Operating 75 compost sites in all five boroughs, the Program provides education and composting opportunities for City residents.

Earth Matter, a New York City-based community and environmental organization, has received funding from the city to facilitate the NYC Compost Project. Earth Matter “makes compost using people’s food scraps to be put back onto the green infrastructure that New York City is so proud to invest in,” Marissa DeDominicis, the organization’s Executive Director, tells Food Tank.

But the ability of organizations like Earth Matter to operate is at risk. The proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025 includes cuts to DSNY that will lead to the defunding of the NYC Compost Project. According to composting advocates, these changes will lead to a loss of jobs and the closing down of drop-off sites.

Since the announcement, community groups released a petition to reinstate community composting programs, which now has more than 50,000 signatures. GrowNYC, an organization that receives city funding to operate 52 compost drop-off sites throughout the city, is the original author behind it. In 2022 alone, the organization diverted almost 2.7 million pounds of food scraps from landfills to compost, according to its website.

Immediately following the Mayor’s announcement, GrowNYC reports that they were preparing to lay off employees within their composting programs. For now, an anonymous donor has enabled their composting work to continue through June 2024, but layoffs may be imminent.

Other organizations are searching for, and in some cases successfully identifying, similar funding streams. Mill Industries Inc. and Friends and community members recently announced a donation to LES Botanical Garden, Earth Matter, BigReuse, and GrowNYC so that these organizations can also continue their composting work.

DeDominicis tells Food Tank that Earth Matter is also working with city councilors to push for the restoration of funding and is hoping for additional funds by the beginning of the next fiscal year in July.

In response to criticism, DSNY points out that New York City is expanding their citywide curbside compost collection. It is projected to be the “nation’s largest and easiest curbside composting program, picking up compostable material from every resident on their recycling day and putting that material to beneficial use,” a DSNY spokesperson tells Food Tank.

The Department currently collects compost in Brooklyn and Queens and by October 2024, they are planning to serve the remaining boroughs. New Yorkers can also compost food scraps in the Smart Composting bins that are located around the city.

DeDominicis tells Food Tank that these bins don’t turn food scraps into soil. She explains that the city transports the waste to facilities that turn scraps into biogas, creating non-compostable slurry as a byproduct, also according to an investigation by Curbed. Smart Bins are also predominantly available in Manhattan and Brooklyn. But community compost drop-off sites, meanwhile, are set up in all corners of the city for greater reach.

DeDominicis also argues that the NYC Compost Project provides an important connection to the community. According to Natural Resources Defense Council research, 40 percent of the American food supply goes to waste. To limit food waste, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends that before throwing food away in a landfill, people should compost it. But, DeDominicis notes that composting is a “lifestyle change.”

Earth Matter sees itself as both a community compost site and a classroom and the organization believes that “as people learn how to compost, they become the advocates, they become the educators, and they go back into their communities,” DeDominicis says.

“People can come to Earth Matter, actually see their food scraps…[and] the transformation into black gold,” DeDominicis tells Food Tank. She believes that the composting site is a place for New Yorkers to learn about where their food waste goes, “making people feel like they belong to a movement, and what they do is a basic act that can make change.”

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Photo by Charles Bayrer, courtesy of Earth Matter

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The 72 chefs who work for Wellness in the Schools teach cafeteria workers culinary skills and children the importance of eating nutritiously. The WITS chefs also train OFNS chefs on how to execute newly developed recipes by New York City’s Inaugural Chef Council. Tasked with developing menu items for NYC schools, the Council includes prominent chefs from around the City.

The goal of the Chefs in Schools program is to “provide meals to NYC public school children that are scratch-cooked, plant-based, and culturally relevant, and to give OFNS cooks workforce development skills, such as mise en place, storage and organization, and batch cooking,” Alexina Cather, the Director of Policy and Special Programs at WITS, tells Food Tank. 

Over the next two years, the 72 WITS chefs will spend a total of one month at each of New York City’s 1,200 public schools. The chefs have already begun training cafeteria staff, sampling recipes with students, and teaching students how to make some of the lunch recipes in WITS’ Food Lab at their flagship schools. 

“Chefs, increasingly, are leaders in their communities…{bringing in a chef} elevates school meals and makes families and kids feel like someone is paying attention to their food and that they care,” Cather explains. 

According to Advocates for Children in New York, one in nine NYC students is experiencing homelessness. WITS is working to ensure that the free universal school meals every public school child in New York City has access to are nutritious. 

Cather says that “regardless of what neighborhood each student lives in… they should be coming to school knowing that they are going to have options, that they are going to have wholesome food that is nutritionally dense, every time they show up at school.”

WITS is also overcoming the challenges of encouraging kids to eat unfamiliar foods by meeting students and families where they are. Studies in the journal Appetite, have found that children are most likely to enjoy a new food after trying it eight or nine times, and once they make it themselves. But “if you are on SNAP benefits at home as a parent, you don’t have ten times for your kid to try a new food. Your food budget is so limited that you have to make sure that what you put on their plate they’re going to eat,” Cather tells Food Tank. 

That’s why WITS is taking action and encouraging students to try new foods by offering samples of new meals, where “the emphasis is just on trying it…and celebrating that because that is the biggest hurdle,” says Cather. Additionally, the organization’s culinary and nutrition classes (aka WITS Labs) allow students to cook the dish before it debuts on their menu, so when it does appear on their plates, students are excited to try it. 

As the WITS and the Mayor’s Office partnership rolls out, Cather is thinking about how to turn programs like Chefs in Schools from pilot into policy, offering schools, families, and communities more opportunities for accessing real and good food.

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Photo courtesy of Wellness in the Schools

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In 2024, the Agri-Food Analytics Lab predicts that average Canadian families of four will spend CAD 701.79 more on food—up from CAD 15,595.21 in 2023. The higher costs are due in part to natural disasters related to the climate crisis, like flooding and wildfires. The speakers say that advocates recognize the need for sustainable food systems, and municipal governments may be powerful in implementing change. 

The webinar’s organizers highlighted the City of Guelph’s efforts in creating a local, circular food system. With a population of 120,000 and a passion for converting food waste into food security, the city won Canada’s Smart Cities Challenge in 2020. 

The winning project, Our Food Futures, “ties together goals of access to affordable, nutritious food, climate action and sustainability, healthy communities, business innovation and social enterprise, and social partnerships,” says Schnurr. One hundred and fifty organizations, such as the SEED, the Second Harvest Food Rescue App, and Community FEWD, collected food waste and distributed food. They also worked with the municipality’s health organization to prescribe produce to patients. It was important for the project to “bring everyone’s perspective into the picture,” says Dainard, who serves as the Smart Cities Project Manager in Wellington.  

Our Food Futures also supported a regenerative agriculture pilot program in Alberta. Dainard explains, “Being able to support farmers as they transition to regenerative agriculture is a part of regional security. It’s going to make us more resistant to the shifts that are coming because of climate change.” As the global food system strains to feed over 8 billion people amid war, pandemics, and political upheaval, local food systems will be at the forefront of the effort to feed communities. 

Building on the pilot’s success, Wellington compiled lessons into a handbook for other municipalities. Speakers reinforced that collaborative efforts with organizations, companies, indigenous leaders, and governments throughout Canada are essential to helping communities access food amidst the climate crisis.

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Photo courtesy of Randy Fath, Upsplash

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