The City Council passed a bill on Thursday requiring New Yorkers to separate their food waste from regular trash, with mandatory composting coming to all five boroughs by next year.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/469245

The City Council passed a bill on Thursday requiring New Yorkers to separate their food waste from regular trash, with mandatory composting coming to all five boroughs by next year.

The residential mandate will roll out borough by borough, starting with Brooklyn and Queens this October, followed by the Bronx and Staten Island in March 2024, and Manhattan that October.

The goal is to reduce the amount of organic waste the city sends to landfills, where it produces a particularly potent greenhouse gas called methane.****

  •  drk   ( @drk@slrpnk.net ) English
    5•1 year ago

    Perhaps I’m missing something here but that headline is quite misleading, isn’t it? The NY residents have to separate their green waste. The fact that that wasn’t the case already surprised me, but, this sounds like a big win.

    •  BrightFadedDog   ( @BrightFadedDog@sh.itjust.works ) English
      3•1 year ago

      It seems like such a basic thing to do, but most places seem to be quite slow making changes, and it is rare to have it mandatory.

      Where I live (Australia) mandatory composting (the resident sorts, the actual composting is done by the city) is only just being introduced now. South Korea banned food waste being sent to landfill in 2005, but our government and community are talking about it like it is a groundbreaking new idea.