New Yorkers can now get fined for not separating their food scraps. Some critics say that's not the right approach.

Property owners and landlords in New York City can now be fined $25 or more if residents are found throwing a banana peel in the trash. As of April 1, all New Yorkers must separate organic waste from the rest of their trash, similar to how metal, glass, paper, and plastic is set aside for recycling.

This is how the city is encouraging participation in its curbside composting program, where food waste is collected weekly by the sanitation department, same as the trash and recycling.

Getting New Yorkers onboard with composting will take time — and effort. When it comes to diverting food waste from landfills by composting it instead, New York lags far behind other large U.S. cities. The city recovered less than 5 percent of eligible households’ organic waste in the 2024 fiscal year. The fines announced this month are designed to boost compliance; in the first week of April, the New York City Department of Sanitation, or DSNY, issued nearly 2,000 tickets for allegedly failing to separate organics.

https://archive.ph/iLpO5

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    93·
    5 days ago

    I’m not sure how this is going to work, except for single-family homes. Apartment buildings with hundreds of units are common, and some of the residents inevitably won’t compost. It’s relatively inconvenient in a large building where residents didn’t have to go outside to throw anything out before. (A lot more inconvenient than recycling, which is usually placed into a bin by the compactor chute.) Is the city just going to fine each building $25 every time an inspector checks? That would be like a new tax, but a low one by NYC standards. Or is the fine going to be larger? Then it would still be a tax, just a higher one, because individual tenants have almost no financial incentive to avoid triggering it.

    In my building, to take out the compost you would have to get dressed, take the elevator to the basement, go outside, enter in the code to get into the fenced area with the compost bins, throw your waste into the bin, buzz the front desk so that they open the basement door for you, take the elevator back upstairs (which also requires buzzing the front desk unless you own your unit), and get undressed. That’s on top of having to keep garbage in your freezer. On the other hand, just throwing away the organic waste costs you nothing (because someone else won’t so the building will be fined anyway) and in the unlikely case where you’re the only one who breaks the rule, your share of the fine will be one eight-hundredth.

    Edit: I’m not making a value judgement. (I wouldn’t come to a composting sub-lemmy and talk about how composting is bad - that would be rude.) I’m just talking about how the law will (or won’t) work in practice.

    • relianceschool@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      5·
      5 days ago

      Is the city just going to fine each building $25 every time an inspector checks?

      From the city’s website, it looks like a fine of $300 can be assessed for buildings with more than 9 units (and for multiple infractions).

      I assume this would incentivize owners to inform their tenants of the policy, and make composting more easily accessible to them. I can think of a dozen loopholes and unforeseen consequences of this law, but however imperfect, I still believe it’s a step in the right direction. Food waste is a massive issue, as is nutrient loss from our soils, and ultimately I think that inconvenience is a small price to pay for addressing that. I realize that not everyone feels the same way, which is why incentives are needed.

      This law is a negative incentive, so I would hope that some positive incentives could be implemented as well.

      • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        31·
        5 days ago

        They do, but I’ve taken that into account already.

        Edit: When I say I’m not sure how it’s going to work, I mean I’m not sure how the city can actually compel most residents to do it. People who choose to do it will be able to.