NYC recycling program growing to include compost

Despite the fact that the Earth doesn’t seem to give a damn, the city’s position towards recycling has been expansionist towards recycling under Mike Bloomberg. We mean, it couldn’t hurt. Fresh off of expanding plastic recycling to cover any kind of plastic, the city is jumping into the composting game. And while it probably won’t rise to the level of squicking people out the way using human waste for fertilizer in Prospect Park would, the will probably cause wrinkled noses. But hey, it’ll save money!

The Times reports that the city’s composting program, aimed ultimately at using food scraps for biogas, is going to be rolling out a voluntary compost program in residential neighborhoods in the coming year, before eventually expanding the program to the entire city by 2015 or 2016. Aside from being environmentally friendly, advocates for the plan say that it will save New York $100 million per year by reducing the city’s need to export its garbage to surrounding states.

Whether or not to make the program mandatory is the question that the composting will eventually face, but the Times notes that Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio are both in favor of cementing it should they win, which would mean fines for noncompliance. So, you might want to start getting into the practice of getting every bit of meat off that chicken bone, if you don’t do it already.

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail