BREAKING NEWS! Mayor Adams has announced that New York City’s voluntary curbside composting collection program will be expanded to include all five boroughs by 2024. One-third of the city’s waste stream is composed of organic material (food scraps, yard waste), almost all of which now ends up in landfills, which emit methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. However, if composted, this material is transformed into a valuable resource that can be used to nutritionally enrich the soil in city parks, street trees, and community gardens, as well as serve as a tool for flood mitigation.
Our WasteNøt Working Group focuses on reducing plastic pollution, minimizing food waste, and advocating for universal mandatory composting through educational outreach and legislative advocacy.
WasteNøt is also a local affiliate of Beyond Plastics and shares its goal of ending plastic pollution through solutions that follow the Zero Waste Hierarchy: Reduce, Reuse, Refill, Recycle.
Check out these Zero Waste solutions around the city!
Since forming in May, 2022, the WasteNøt Working Group has:
- Organized constituent lobby meetings with New York State lawmakers to urge them to sign onto plastic waste reduction bills, including the new improved Bottle Bill (S.237) and the game-changing Packaging Reduction and Recycling Act (S.1064)
- Testified at New York City Council Hearings in support of waste reduction legislation, including the Skip the Stuff bill that passed this year.
- Tabled at community-based events to disseminate information about waste issues and legislation and inform New Yorkers of actions they can take as individuals to reduce plastic and food waste.
- Co-hosted a rally at the U.N., followed by a march across 42nd Street, to protest the fact that Coca-Cola, the world’s worst plastic polluter, engaged in greenwashing as one of the corporate sponsors of COP27, the 2022 UN Climate Change Conference.
- When funding for New York City’s composting programs was slashed in 2021 during the COVID pandemic, 350NYC joined the Save Our Compost Coalition and successfully fought to have it restored. We now actively support the NY City Council’s Zero Waste Package,
Resources
NYC Compost – Food Scrap Drop-off Sites
How to Donate, Reuse, Repair and Share in NYC