Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Think Piece: Policy Implementation Ideas for Sustainability: Citywide Composting (NYC)

This is an assignment done for class on ways that the city/federal officials could begin to make a dent in their policies or programs concerning sustainability. I personally feel that pilot projects with high visibility and basic infrastructure work the best in an urban setting, but frankly, how much do I really know about these things outside of elementary school nutrition? Not much...

New York City could enjoy measurable benefit from a fairly basic urban agriculture program seen in other urban settings. These are programs that are implemented on a very local basis to promote community and sustainable values that can create not only economy but also education for the city. They are taken from San Francisco programming which is shown to be successful and can be translated to the urban spaces in New York City with minimal funding when compared to landfill and other resource costs.

San Francisco has long taken action in recycling consumer materials and is now taking further steps by including composting in their sanitation services. The green bins are placed with trash bins and hold all compostable materials that are then taken to city composting facilities in northern California. An estimated over 300 tons of organic material are collected daily reducing landfill needs and increasing economy utilizing the compostable outcome, hummus, in California agriculture. The New York City Department of Sanitation claims a lack of funding and manpower for such an endeavor and makes referrals to other community and ecology groups in the city, which do compost on very small-scale settings. The DSNY has formed the New York City Compost Project to do these some of these things as well as to educate. While this referral is helpful, it is very limited in the reach of education and does not successfully engender the public to begin thinking about their refuse and how to make it work for them or the city at large.

Beginning pilot programs in different high density zip codes (or sanitation routes) to test the merits of a citywide composting drive would bring notice to the need for this service as well as acclimatize citizens to be more aware of their refuse. Incentivizing restaurants to participate as well would make a sizable dent in food refuse. Organizations such as City Harvest already procure unused edible food collection, therefore, there is no reason why inedible food collection could not be collected by Sanitation Department workers (enabled as part of such a pilot program).

The New York Sanitation Department already recognizes groups making composting more translatable to the average person. The Lower East Side Ecology Center facilitates personal composting clinics giving subsidized materials to attendees. While this subsidized funding is certainly necessary, it is no way feasible to conquer or address the mounting problem of refuse in the city and the need for landfills to contain it. Looking at an urban program like that in San Francisco would show the feasibility of a similar program in an urban center like New York City and make active steps towards a solution.

Sources:
San Francisco Recycling
San Francisco Environmental Organization
Sunset Scavenger
New York City Compost Organization
Wasteless New York City
NRDC Recycling

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