photo composite given as courtesy from Sustainable Generation
Food scraps in the Big Apple are now enjoying a second life as free compost for residents and community gardens.
It’s all down to an expansion of New York City’s organic waste collection program which started last year. In it, yard waste and food scraps are collected curbside and brought to a central composting facility before being turned into rich fertilizer.
Before, organic waste would be transferred to landfills where it would decompose and produce copious clouds of methane, a short-lived yet potent greenhouse gas.
Now, it’s brought to a facility where natural microbes consume it and the methane it produces in the process of breaking it all down into fertilizer.
Under massive white tarps at the Staten Island Compost Facility, everything from dead tree stumps to apple cores to greasy pizza boxes are consumed. Temperatures under the tarps are kept over 100°F which has been shown to kill harmful microbes and weed seeds.
The microbes are joined by insects and fungi which together turn the waste into a nutrient rich fertilizer that’s sold to landscapers and left at distribution points for residents to bag away for free.
Dept. of Sanitation officials estimate some 6 million pounds of this compost had been handed out.
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When spread on lawns and beds, it improves soil health, improves water retention—impacting stormwater systems citywide, and keeps green spaces lush and thriving.
In operation since 2014, the yard waste tree-trimmings recycling has produced some 21,000 tons of compost over the last several years.
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