The Organic Waste Programme That San Francisco Figured Out in 2009 Has Arrived in New York With Characteristic NYC Energy
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Mandatory Composting in New York: The Programme San Francisco Figured Out Fifteen Years Ago
NEW YORK, NY — New York City has implemented mandatory residential composting, requiring all households to separate organic waste — food scraps, soiled paper, plant material — from trash for separate collection. The programme has been piloted for years in selected districts and is now citywide, making New York the largest American city with mandatory residential organic waste separation. The programme is designed to divert approximately 34 percent of the city’s residential waste stream from landfill, reduce the methane emissions from decomposing organics, and eventually produce compost that can be returned to city parks and community gardens. These are legitimate environmental goals. The implementation is New York City doing something that requires residents to change their kitchen habits, which is a specific kind of civic challenge.
The brown bins that the city has distributed for organic collection are smaller than the trash cans they supplement and are supposed to be stored somewhere in apartments where kitchen space is frequently measured in inches rather than feet. The question of where a Manhattan studio apartment resident is supposed to store a composting container has been addressed by the city through guidance that includes “under the kitchen sink” and “in a cabinet” as though Manhattan studio apartments have either of these in the sizes implied. The guidance is technically correct. The spatial reality is what it is.
What Compliance Looks Like
Compliance rates in the pilot programmes have been approximately 60 to 70 percent, which is higher than expected for a voluntary programme and lower than required for the programme’s waste diversion goals to be met. Mandatory composting produces higher compliance than voluntary composting, because the brown bin is present, the collection is occurring, and the social visibility of neighbors who have sorted their waste correctly creates the norm that most people follow. It also produces creative interpretation of what constitutes organic waste in cases where residents are unsure and the bins are already full. Managing behavioural change at scale requires enforcement and education; essential urban services require sustained institutional commitment. The bins are distributed. The composting is mandatory. New York is composting. San Francisco has been doing this since 2009 and was not asked for advice.