What is Composting

The average New York City household throws out over two pounds of food waste per day, amounting to over 3,000 tons of organic matter that must be trucked off to distant landfills. In a landfill, organic matter breaks down in the absence of oxygen, creating methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, which together with transportation impacts contribute to climate change.

 

Composting recognizes biodegradable materials, such as food waste, as a renewable resource that allows us to close the natural cycle -- returning vital nutrients back to the soil, to nourish the earth and to green our City. By recycling food waste we are producing the very material that supports the growth of life itself: the earth!

 

The Ecology Center runs a Community Compost Program, collecting kitchen scraps through an innovative drop off and processing program, as well as the NYC Compost Project in Manhattan, a compost education program, which teaches New Yorkers how to compost at home or in community gardens. Through these programs we keep hundreds of tons of organic material out of the waste stream and introduce countless New Yorkers to the benefits of composting.