But if recycling enforcement is any indication, penalties are likely to be few and far between. Lily Baum Pollans, an associate professor at Hunter College who studies waste management, said a lack of enforcement is one reason for the city’s low compliance. The city’s overall curbside recycling diversion rate – the portion of the city’s total waste that is diverted from landfills and recycled – is roughly 17 percent.
The composting mandate covers all New York City residents, in buildings large and small, except for the roughly 400,000 New Yorkers who live in public housing, because the public housing authority “described as a federal agency,” and not under those city mandates, said Shahana Hanif, who, along with Keith Powers, are the other two lead sponsors of the legislative package.
To further the goal of reducing methane, some of the organic waste collected will be composted, a process that “reduces almost any methane,” according to Eric A. Goldstein, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
But until the city builds better composting infrastructure, most of the organics will be fed to anaerobic digesters, which Mr. Goldstein describes as superior to using landfills, but not as good. In digesters, “methane is extracted to generate energy, replacing fossil fuels,” he said.
Nearly half of New York City’s residential waste is organic matter, and it “represents the largest portion of New York City’s residential solid waste that could be diverted from the landfill,” according to a 2021 report from the New York City Independent Budget Office. (The Department of Sanitation puts the proportion of organic waste at a more conservative 37 percent of the city’s waste.)
The report states that the cost per ton of hauling organic waste is higher than it is for recyclables and regular waste, a situation that can only be solved by expanding the program throughout the city.
