Community composting funding hangs in the balance as budget deadline looms

Yulin L.

Community composting funding hangs in the balance as budget deadline looms
Students work on a compost pile during a composting course led with support from Big Reuse. Photo by Antonio Meza

With the city budget deadline approaching on June 30, funding for community composting remains uncertain.

The city’s curbside brown-bin program is not facing cuts. But community composting organizations received $6.25 million in city budget funding this fiscal year for local composting sites, community garden support, and education and outreach. That support expires at the end of the fiscal year, and funding for the year beginning July 1 has not yet been finalized.

Earlier this year, the city completed a $24 million investment in new snow operations infrastructure and a composting facility in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The composting facility can process 600,000 pounds of food scraps, yard waste, and wood chips annually.

Food scraps, yard waste, and food-soiled paper make up the single largest portion of the municipal waste stream. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that U.S. food loss and waste is responsible for 170 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions each year, excluding landfill emissions. Once in a landfill, rotting food waste generates a significant amount of methane. In New York City, residents discard as much as 4,000 tons of food scraps, yard waste, and food-soiled paper daily.

Grassroots organizations and local activists have fought for years for municipal funding. The most dramatic shift occurred in 2023, when the Adams administration scrapped all funding for the New York City community composting program from the Department of Sanitation budget. The City Council later restored the funding, throwing organizations a lifeline using discretionary funds.

Sunset Park currently hosts only one community composting site. Los Colibríes Community Garden received a tumbler-bin system through City Council funding in 2024. The garden did not respond to Sunset Post’s request for comment regarding the upcoming budget.

Big Reuse, a nonprofit organization that offers educational programming, equipment installation, and community outreach, helped build the system at the garden.

Natalia Sucre, compost education and outreach program manager at Big Reuse, said the NYC Community Compost Network is asking for funding to continue operating and expanding its network of sites.

“And for doing the community-based outreach, which goes hand in hand with DSNY curbside,” Sucre said, referring to the Department of Sanitation. “DSNY does not have real community outreach programming. We are the ones who do that and we need to be able to continue doing that.”

Earlier this year, Big Reuse hosted its first Spanish-language Master Composter course, which included students from Sunset Park and Bay Ridge.

Antonio Meza, a teaching assistant for the course, said the program broadened students’ understanding of composting and introduced them to different parts of the city.

“We took them to Governors Island. Some of them had never been to Governors Island,” Meza said. “Some of them have been but did not know that a facility like Earth Matter existed,” he added, referring to the composting nonprofit on the island.

“Some of them got very interested. A few of them tried to join a community garden to do composting,” Meza said.

While some curbside collection goes to composting facilities on Staten Island, other waste is sent to anaerobic digesters that convert food scraps into biofuel. Activists argue that community composting supplements the curbside program by turning waste into rich, healthy soil that strengthens plants and helps prevent stormwater runoff.

“There was an event on Governors Island where Earth Matter took over the waste management,” Meza said. “Over 90% of the waste produced at the event was either compostable or recyclable. It shows how much resources we can divert from landfills and reuse, repurpose and compost, which is beneficial for all of us.”

Throughout June, Big Reuse organized Thursday phone-bank events to support community composting, encouraging residents to call and email City Council members. Residents can still get involved through Big Reuse’s “Thank Your Council Member & Ask for Continued Composting Funding” page.