Community Composting: Public-Nonprofit Partnerships and Equity in New York City Organic Waste Programs

by

Bahij V. Chancey

B.F.A. Architecture Yale University, 2013

SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER IN CITY PLANNING AT THE

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

JUNE 2021

© 2021 Bahij V. Chancey. All Rights Reserved.

The author here by grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of the thesis document in

whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.

Signature of Author: __________________________________________________________________ Department of Urban Studies and Planning

May 25, 2021

Certified by: _________________________________________________________________________ Gabriella Y. Carolini

Associate Professor of International Development and Urban Planning Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Thesis Supervisor

Accepted by: ________________________________________________________________________ Cesar McDowell

Professor of the Practice Chair, M.C.P. Committee

Department of Urban Studies and Planning

2 / 97

Community Composting: Public-Nonprofit Partnerships and Equity in New York City Organic Waste Programs

by

Bahij V. Chancey

Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on May 25, 2021 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of Master in City Planning

ABSTRACT

This thesis explores the ecosystem of public, nonprofit, and private organizations that contribute to household organic waste composting in New York City, and the public-nonprofit-partnership (PNPP) efforts that the City’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) has employed to realize its compost education, outreach, collection, and processing efforts. These PNPPs evolved in the context of an ecosystem of nonprofit and private sector actors, as well as purely municipal efforts to collect organic material and divert it from the city’s waste stream. The research investigates how DSNY’s PNPP strategies affected the geographic, demographic, and social equity of its compost initiatives through a series of 16 semi-structured interviews with people both involved in and working outside of the partnerships, and geographic and quantitative analysis of public data. The research reveals the unique bureaucratic circumstances under which the PNPPs formed, how their configuration limited their ability to work with informal and commercial entities also relevant in the space and affected the equity of program services. The study finds that PNPPs succeeded in serving a diverse and representative population, but that public funds may have directly benefited wealthier and Whiter communities while more marginalized Black, brown, and poor communities were left to be served by volunteers. In addition, the research finds that community composting as practiced by the PNPPs fostered numerous ancillary social benefits like the creation of community cohesion, the development of local green jobs, and the encouragement of deep volunteerism that went beyond collecting and processing household organic waste and therefore escaped the comprehensive measurement, reporting, and support of the Sanitation agency. Thesis Supervisor: Gabriela Y. Carolini Title: Associate Professor of International Development and Urban Planning

3 / 97

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my advisor, Gabriella Carolini, for all of the guidance and direction she

offered throughout the process of conceiving of, researching, and writing this thesis. I would also like to thank my thesis reader, Emily Bachman, for her review, edits, and insights about the NYC compost system. This research would not have been possible without the sixteen people who I interviewed in the process of this research, and I owe them my gratitude and thanks. I would also like to thank all the people in who make organics recycling in New York City possible, and who dedicate themselves and their efforts to this cause. I feel privileged to know some of you and work alongside you in that endeavor. Finally, I would like to thank my parents and my partner for supporting me in this process.

4 / 97

Community Composting: Public-Nonprofit

Partnerships and Equity in New York City

Organic Waste Programs

by Bahij Chancey Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Master in City Planning Thesis

May 25, 2021

5 / 97

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 7

2. Literature Review 10

3. Theory and Research Questions 17

4. Methodology 19

5. A History of Organic Waste Diversion in NYC 22

5.1 Launching a Public Nonprofit Partnership: The New York City Compost Project 24 5.2 Making it Work: Food Scrap Drop-Off Programs 30 5.3 Private Organics Collection and Processing 40

6. Organic Waste in Systems in NYC 42

6.1 Collection 43 6.2 Processing 49

7. NYC Compost Under Crisis 56

8. Insights from the Ground: Interview Findings 66

8.1 Who Composts: Service Equity 67 8.2 True Value: Strengths and Weaknesses of PNPP Programs 71

9. Discussion 78

9.1 Social Equity and Environmental Justice 79 9.3 Labor and Employment 82 9.4 Measuring Success 84

10. Recommendations and Conclusion 87

Bibliography 92

6 / 97

Figure List Figure 1: Institute for Local Self Reliance Food Waste Reduction Hierarchy. 11 Figure 2: New York City Compost Project partner locations. 26 Figure 3: Food Scrap Drop Off site signage. 31 Figure 4: GrowNYC greenmarket food scrap drop-off station. 33 Figure 5: New York City Compost Project Food Scrap Drop-Off Sites by Operator Group. 34 Figure 6: Uptown Grand Central Fresh Food Box “Compost on-the-go” drop-off. 35 Figure 7: Year of First Household Organics Curbside Pick-up by Community District. 38 Figure 8: NYC Block Groups by Food Scrap Drop-Off Access. 43 Figure 9: Food Scrap Drop-Offs, Number of Open Hours per Year. 45 Figure 10: Food Scrap Drop Offs, Open Hour Times of Day. 46 Figure 11: Census Block Group Racial and Ethnic Demographics by FSDO Access Type. 47 Figure 12: Open Food Scrap Drop-Off sites by time, day and month. 49 Figure 13: Organic Waste's Journey from Household to Disposal or Reuse. 51 Figure 14: Earth Matter, a mid-scale community compost processing facility. 53 Figure 15: Processing Facilities Outside NYC that Received DSNY Brown Bin Organics. 56 Figure 16: Staffed Food Scrap Drop-Off Openings after Funding Returned in June 2020. 61 Figure 17: An unstaffed Food Scrap Drop-Off location. 62

Table List Table 1: Organics Recycling PNPP Partners. 25 Table 2: Organic waste diversion by collection type. 41 Table 3: Census Demographics by Food Scrap Drop-Off Access Type. 44 Table 4: Census Demographics by Curbside Collection Access. 48 Table 5: Regional Organic Waste Recyclers that Receive DSNY Brown Bin Material. 55

7 / 97

1. Introduction “But are we in their communities?” asks a former New York City Compost Project employee, about whether communities of color and low-income neighborhoods are part of the City’s official organics recycling initiatives. New York City (NYC) has slowly built up its organics

recycling programs over the last three decades, largely through public nonprofit partnerships

(PNPP). These partnerships, reflected in the New York City Compost Project (NYCCP) and

the Department of Sanitation’s (DSNY) partnership with nonprofit GrowNYC have delivered

most of the City’s composting education and technical support, and were eventually expanded to include collection and local compost processing. The partnerships and their operations and reach, both geographically and demographically, are the subjects of this thesis. Accurate or not, the perception that composting in NYC is for White and affluent people persists, despite efforts by administrators within the City and their nonprofit partners to eliminate it. This perception, and any truth behind it, damage the City’s ability to equitably serve its many diverse communities with organics recycling services, which is essential to the success of NYC’s environmental and social equity goals. The research presented in this study elucidates the creation and operation of DSNY’s composting PNPPs and investigates how this novel arrangement has affected the social equity of access to organics recycling education and services in NYC. The geographic and environmental equity implications of NYC’s waste system are clearly reflected in examinations of waste transport. Today, NYC pays over $420 million annually to export and offload its municipal solid waste to other communities, with NYC’s 3.3 million tons of household waste per year travelling to seven different states as far as South Carolina, (DSNY, 2021a; Galka, 2016). This process disperses the negative environmental and health effects of processing and disposing waste throughout an enormous waste-shed, effectively pushing the challenge of dealing with the city’s detritus to other places and people, out-of-sight, and out-of-mind. Disposing municipal solid waste in landfills has negative environmental effects including the contamination of vast swaths of land and groundwater, the release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas (GHG), and the loss of recyclable and reusable resources that must otherwise be newly harvested and extracted at further environmental cost. To avoid these tolls, the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle” has permeated nearly every facet of waste handling, with more recent efforts to move toward zero-waste systems and circular economies. In addition to reducing consumption and reusing materials, reaching urban

8 / 97

environmental goals will require a major shift in NYC’s waste disposal systems that allows its residents to recycle, rather than dispose of everything they wish to throw away. Driven by the environmental virtues and economic gains of reducing the amount of waste NYC sends to landfills, the city government has made limited efforts to reduce consumption, and more significant efforts to increase reuse, and collect and process recyclables. According to DSNY’s 2017 Waste Characterization Study the City estimates that 34% of residential waste is recyclable material (glass, metal, plastic, paper), 34% is compostable organic material, 9% is otherwise divertible, and the remaining 23% is non-recyclable material that must be avoided, reused, or disposed of in landfills, (DSNY, 2017: 11). The City has been somewhat successful in diverting the first of these groups from landfills through DSNY’s curbside recycling collection program which serves every residential property in NYC and in 2019 diverted 46.7% of its target materials from landfills. Eliminating the city’s non-recyclable waste requires significant efforts to reduce consumption and encourage reuse, which the City has introduced some small initiatives to address. Those actions include DSNY support for bans on polystyrene products and plastic films and supporting certain material diversion programs for electronics and hazardous waste. This study focuses on the final third of the NYC’s waste, organic material, and the PNPP and municipal programs the City has implemented to educate New Yorkers about its collection, recycling, and processing.

In concert with existing municipal recycling programs for paper, glass and plastic, recycling household organics could save the City hundreds of millions of dollars annually in final disposal costs. Diverting and processing organic waste also captures some natural GHG emitted by decomposing material in landfill, and can produce a variety of beneficial goods from organic fertilizer, to electricity, and heat (Platt et al., 2014). Composting organic waste also works as a carbon sink, returning carbon and nitrogen to the topsoil where it can feed and be stored in the biomass of flora. These environmental and financial incentives led Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration to pledge a 75% reduction in waste sent to landfills by 2030, as part of NYC’s 2011 strategic plan (PlaNYC, 2011). NYC’s current Mayor Bill de Blasio doubled

down on this pledge, and now aims for no waste sent to landfills by 2030, an initiative dubbed

“0x30” (zero by thirty). If NYC is to reach this ambitious goal it will require an effort that cuts across its

incredibly diverse population to reach every New Yorker. This may be accomplished by

prioritizing socially equitable investments in Black, brown, and low-income neighborhoods, environmental justice (EJ) communities that have traditionally been burdened by environmental

9 / 97

hazards and excluded from environmental solutions. We explore the City’s efforts to build up one arm of its municipal solid waste management (SWM) through PNPPs, and the resulting effects on social equity. While municipal composting programs focus on providing fair geographic service this study’s findings reveal that this is not equivalent with socially equitable outcomes given the distribution, character, and density of NYC’s many communities. Through its PNPPs, the City has catalyzed the growth of an extensive network of community composters that fosters ancillary social and community benefits atop organic recycling’s environmental goals. Alongside service measurement, the reach of these social goods and who can access them are as central to this study as the composting services themself.

The study gathers insights about the partnerships and their creation and operation through a series of interviews with the people who have built up and worked in NYC’s composting spaces, both within and outside of the partnership. The research also combines geographic and quantitative data from the NYC government with demographic data from the U.S. Census to understand who is served where. Its findings reveal that even in the early state of the City’s composting programs, there are demographic disparities in who is served how, as well as which operators in this space benefit from City partnership and which do not. We find that pockets of innovation and pragmatism exist within bureaucratic agencies that have enabled the City to generate outsized impacts with its small investments, but that they operate within a state apparatus whose siloed agencies prevent comprehensive measurement and support of community composting’s wide range of strengths.

While NYC represents a unique case, DSNY’s experience operating the program includes implications for municipal SWM service delivery in other large and diverse megacities. The City’s strategic choice to coalesce a network of existing nonprofit organizations for outreach, education, collection, and processing services also contributes to an active discourse about PPPs in municipal service delivery, particularly that focused on the sectoral distinctions between private, nonprofit, and volunteer organization public partnerships. Finally, with a lack of literature investigating the implications for access and equity in relation to PNPP

service delivery, this thesis will offer new insights as cities around the U.S. and world adopt social equity as a policy priority. The project takes a holistic view of social equity to go beyond measures of fair municipal service delivery by investigating upstream City procurement and partnership processes and how they affect who has access to work with the City of New York and the resulting effects on distributional outcomes. This research extends the question of who municipal partnerships serve, to explore who partners with municipalities.

10 / 97

2. Literature Review Research and publications that range several disciplines are relevant to the focus of this project, from economics, public finance, and urban planning to organization theory, public administration studies, and waste studies. The section will begin by reviewing the literature about municipal SWM and public composting programs. It will then move to an exploration of the discourse around PPPs and public service delivery in the literature of planning, organizational theory, and public administration studies, giving special attention to studies that focus on PNPP. Taking this focus further, we will examine the growing discourse that centers measures of social equity in municipal service delivery, and specifically those studies that follow this line of inquiry through examples of PPPs. Finally, the review will close with a review of the NYC context for this study. Exploring the literature on this subject matter to date makes it evident that PPP municipal service delivery has been investigated at length, however the role that PNPPs play within that, and their resulting effect on equity is little explored but of unique pertinence to contemporary urban policy.

In economic terms, waste management can be considered a “merit good:” “a service, deemed so important…that the law requires that it is provided for the benefit of the entire society, regardless of the interest of the market to supply it or the users’ ability (or willingness) to pay for it,” (Wilson et al., 2012: 251). Though governments, planners, professionals, and academics debate how best to deliver it, SWM’s necessity is rarely questioned. The detrimental impacts of poor waste management on public health, the environment, and economic activity, make this clear (UN Human Settlements Program, 2010). While the necessity of properly planned SWM is universally recognized, particularly in dense urban areas, the methods of SWM provision differ greatly across contexts. As an essential service, SWM has garnered the publication of numerous authoritative comparative surveys, doctrines of best practice, and technical manuals by the international development community. The United Nations’ 2010 report “Solid Waste Management in the World’s Cities” and the World Bank’s 2012 report “What a Waste: A Global Review of Solid Waste Management” both serve to provide illustrative case studies of its successes and failures and elucidate best practices in waste management from the community to international scales.

Under the guidance of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SWM systems often adhere to a common hierarchy that ranges from waste reduction as the most desirable

11 / 97

solution, through reuse, recycling, recovery, and finally to disposal as the least preferred outcome (Gertsakis and Lewis, 2003). For an increasing number of cities, composting organic material has become one of the recycling processes that helps divert waste from landfills. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) promotes a food recovery hierarchy that recommends source reduction, feeding hungry people, feeding animals, industrial uses, composting, and finally landfill or incineration in that order, (US EPA, 2015). Here, industrial use includes energy capture by anaerobic digestion, a process through which food scraps are broken down in an oxygen-free environment to capture the methane and other natural gases emitted as it decomposes. Methane generated in this process can be purified and used as fuel to generate energy or propel vehicles. By their assessment composting represents one of the least productive uses for food waste, above only landfilling. Disputing this ranking, the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) promotes its own food waste reduction hierarchy (Figure 1, pg11) that does not differentiate between composting and energy capture, but instead promotes whichever is the most localized recycling option possible. In its

Hierarchy to Reduce Food Waste and Grow Community

Prevention. Do not generate food waste in the first place! Reduce portions, buy what you need, and organize your fridge for optimal food usage.

Feed hungry people. Divert food not suitable for people to animals such as backyard chickens or to local farmers’ livestock.

Composting in backyards or in homes. Avoid collection costs!

Onsite composting or anaerobic digestion, and community composters can accept material from off-site or simply process their own material.

Composting or anaerobic digestion at the small town or farm scale. These systems handle typically between 10 and 100 tons per week and are designed to serve small geographic areas.

Facilities serving large geographic areas that typically handle more than 100 tons per week. Material generally leaves the community in which it is generated.Mixed garbage is mechanically and biologically processed to recover recyclables and reduce waste volume and the potential for methane emissions before landfill disposal.

Food waste should be banned from landfills and trash incinerators due to their high capital costs, pollution, and contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Figure 1: Institute for Local Self Reliance Food Waste Reduction Hierarchy. ILSR a national nonprofit organization working to strengthen local economies, and redirect waste into local recycling, composting, and reuse industries. The diagram is reprinted here with permission.

12 / 97

disaggregation of organic recycling activities, ILSR promotes on-site composting or digestion at the source, then small-scale decentralized community recycling, and finally centralized recycling systems before moving to the least preferred disposal methods, (Platt, 2017). This ranking rests on the theory that decentralized composting can create additional social benefits like community cohesion, and that it reduces the transportation emissions associated with centralized waste recycling and disposal. The preference for local decentralized material recovery is in line with material life-cycle analyses that promote closed-loop systems in which communities work locally to satisfy as many of their own material needs and process as much of their output waste as possible. Closed-loop systems, and the related concept of circular economies build on Fernandez and Ferrão’s concept of “urban metabolism,” that describes a city’s characteristic to exchange “matter and energy” with natural environments, (Ferrão and Fernandez, 2013: xi). “We can redefine our cities to adopt economies that incorporate a circular metabolism in which wastes are converted back into nutrients,” (ibid.: xii). Under their

logic, urban waste management should prioritize practices that recover materials and dispose of waste internally, minimizing a city’s impacts on its surrounding regions and the natural world.

Although composting holds an established role in urban SWM systems many municipalities have been slow to incorporate it into their practices. Authors have examined the barriers that stand in the way of the U.S.’s transitions to sustainable waste management systems and conclude that entrenched practices in SWM like “a lack of enforcement of existing policy, fragmented commercial and residential management, financing that incentivizes disposal, and the functional distance of those most interested in change from decision-making processes,” all contribute to system inertia (Pollans, 2017: 2317). Studies have found that demographic and urban characteristics like median income, educational attainment, and density that are predictive of the presence of recycling programs, are not similarly indicative of the existence of food scrap diversion programs, but that cities which can build upon existing services, and which have prioritized waste diversion through policy are more likely to have implemented food scrap collection services (Pollans et al., 2017).

Municipal composting services can be considered a common-pool resource in economic terms; it is difficult to exclude potential beneficiaries (residents) in areas where it is offered, and it has subtractibility of use (a limited amount can be collected and processed). 20th century urban planning paradigms sought clear delineations between the activities of the “market” and those of a singularly defined “state.” Many economists believe that private goods

13 / 97

are optimally distributed by the market, but that state intervention is required to police the distribution of common-pool resources, which were often viewed as candidates for municipal services. This simplistic dichotomy is of little help in the contemporary city, where political and organizational arrangements are rarely so easily delineated and may exist across public-private boundaries. The concept of polycentricity seeks to assess whether “the activities of a diverse array of public and private agencies engaged in providing and producing of public services in metropolitan areas [are] chaotic…or potentially a productive arrangement,” (Ostrom, 2010: 643). In a meta-analysis of lab and empirical studies, Ostrom determined that more complex arrangements with “many centers of decision making that are formally independent of each other” led to a more equal distribution of common-pool resources within affected communities. By enabling open communication among the parties benefitting from and managing the resource, complex polycentric arrangements better managed resources than entirely centralized systems of public distribution and management. Ostrom concludes in suggesting that scholars need “to ask how diverse polycentric institutions help or hinder the innovativeness, learning, adapting, trustworthiness, levels of cooperation of participants, and the achievement of more effective, equitable, and sustainable outcomes at multiple scales, (Ostrom, 2010: 655).

Public-private partnerships (PPP) are one form of polycentric resource management and distribution that has garnered significant academic fascination. Myriad recent and contemporary PPP studies seek to assess the efficacy, efficiency and equity that this framework of public service delivery offers to citizens, states, and participating organizations (Andrews and Entwistle, 2010; Becker and Patterson, 2005; Jooste, 2010; Mendel and Brundey, 2012; Osei-Kyei and Chan, 2015, among others). Ostrom (2010) argues that today, nearly every form of municipal service in cities of the Global North is at least partially reliant on PPP. As municipal SWM has demanded increasingly complex services, PPPs have proliferated in the sector. Cities turn to PPP in SWM for many of the same reasons they do so in other municipal services, because they are thought to increase efficiency, lower costs, distribute risk,

leverage outside acumen and experience, and provide economic opportunities. PPPs are a mix of shared risk and shared reward. Although partnerships seek a balance between the two, factors like fraud, lack of oversight, inexperienced public sector negotiators, and undefined partner roles can lead to imbalance and result in PPPs with poor public-sector returns (Becker and Patterson, 2005). Studies rarely show that public-private-for-profit partnerships deliver services more efficiently, or at a better value for public money, despite this assumption being

14 / 97

the prevailing theory (Andrews and Entwistle, 2010; Warner, 2012). While PPPs and in particular the presence of non-governmental organizations (NGO)

and community-based organizations (CBO) in the SWM space is somewhat typical within lower income environments, where such stakeholders have been key to broadening access and adequacy of sanitation services, within higher-income cities like NYC, such services have traditionally been the domain of the public sector and for-profit organizations. Examining these cases from the Global South offers insight to the workings of PNPPs in SWM. In these lower income countries, urban governments turn to PNPP in the context of public sector financial and capacity constraints in order to reduce costs, expand coverage areas, or increase resident participation, (Silvestre et al., 2020). In 2012, Ahsan et al. provided an illustrative example of NGOs and CBOs partnering to deliver waste management, profiling the existing partnership model in Khulna, Bangladesh. Conspicuously absent from their analysis is the fact that the initial PNPP that led to the system’s success in Khulna was a product of World Bank investment in local NGO Prodipan. In 2019, Saadeh et al. offer a case study of PPP’s in the waste management system of Palestine’s West Bank that is explicit about the challenges that come along with PPP’s much lauded gains. The researchers identify financial, political, technical, administrative, and legal barriers to PPP’s implementation, and note that in Palestine, as observed elsewhere in the developing world, PPPs are often catalyzed by investment from international development organizations like the World Bank, but flounder and fail when initial investment dries up and revenue sources underperform forecasts. In the Global South, Saadeh and co-authors attribute some of this risk to insufficient public sector data on waste generation and a lack of thorough market analysis for recycled goods. Drawing on findings from Ahsan, Rajamanikam et al. (2014), and Saadeh it’s clear that international investment from major donors has been key to the success or failure of many PPP and PNPP endeavors in the Global South. The literature about PPPs in the Global South makes clear that although governments turn to them to alleviate costs, without consistent and dedicated funding on the public side of the equation many will still struggle to perform. While many of

these articles offer case studies that include NGOs and CBOs, most do not thoroughly examine the conditions that set PNPPs apart from government partnerships with for-profit entities. The name public-private partnership commonly connotes a relationship between government and private companies; however, the term can also be inclusive of relationships between government and the private nonprofit sector. In the context of PPPs, nonprofit actors

15 / 97

sometimes facilitate the formation of larger partnerships across public and business sectors as an intermediary, and serve as a steward of the public interest (Mendel and Brundey, 2012). Nonprofit involvement in SWM services is sometimes promoted as a means to increase citizen participation, under the theory that organizations embedded within communities can leverage existing networks and relationships to increase service uptake. Joseph (2006) argues that CBOs have a key role to play in engaging the public in proper waste disposal education and mobilization. Joseph asserts that the involvement of local leaders amplifies the power of CBOs to communicate with the public and improve waste collection at the source. Along with the surge of academic interest in PPPs that started in the 1990s, there has been an increased focus on the effects that such arrangements have on the distribution and social equity of service provision. The term equity has seen an explosion in use in the last decade, however with a variety of possible meanings, it is not always evident what equity, or particularly service equity refers to. In his early work on assessing the equity of public service provision, Savas (1978: 802) defines equity as referring “to the fairness, impartiality, or equality of service.” In that article, Savas elaborates by suggesting that “a citywide service can be efficient and effective but it could be perceived as inequitable if it fails to treat all segments of the population similarly,” (Savas, 1978: 803). Savas further describes four different variations of equitable distribution: (1) equal payment; (2) equal output; (3) equal input; and (4) equal satisfaction of demand. Each of these four has its respective pitfalls, and the selection of any one equity measure will largely depend on the social and political values of the assessor. The recently developed Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) framework, advanced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, promotes equity in wastewater sanitation service delivery and conceptualizes equity to mean that “public investments and subsidies prioritize reaching the poor and most vulnerable”, (Schrecongost et al., 2020: 5).

More recent scholarship has used equity as one lens to evaluate the success of PPPs. Andrews and Entwistle (2010) examine PPP through a sectoral lens, evaluating differences in performance outcomes across ‘three Es,’ efficacy, efficiency, and equity, for three types of

public partnership: public-public, public-private, and public-nonprofit. Their literature review reveals the commonly held belief that public-public partnerships result in efficacy improvements, public-private partnership results in efficiency improvements, and public-nonprofit partnerships result in equity improvements. While their study finds improvements across the three Es for public-public partnerships, it also shows statistically significant decreases in efficacy and equity associated with public-private partnership, and no statistically

16 / 97

significant changes to performance for public-nonprofit partnerships, suggesting an overemphasis on the benefits of public-private sector partnerships in particular. Surveying literature about PPPs from 1990 to 2013, Osei-Kyei and Chan (2015) identify a list of the 37 critical success factors drawn from 22 major academic publications, including factors related to program outcomes like service reliability, and environmental impact, however they did not find any version of program equity in assessment measures. Studies have found that privatization measures, such as contracting-out, and PPPs have resulted in less equitable service delivery, because of the market principle that private firms are profit seeking (Andrews and Entwistle, 2010; Warner, 2012). In one of the few articles that explicitly studies the effect of PPP on social equity measures in MSW management, Wang and McFadden (2016) find that heavily Hispanic neighborhoods in a southwest American city received significantly worse service under privately contracted haulers than those with municipal pick-up. Residents surveyed did show that private service received higher satisfaction ratings during the quarter when a new contract began, (ibid.).

New York City in particular has a well-studied history of SWM practices that date back to open dump sites in colonial New Amsterdam. Among the scholars who have studied NYC’s waste system, Melosi (2016) has studied the history of Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill, once the largest managed landfill in the world, and authored an authoritative tomb on the city’s long and fraught relationship with waste management, (Melosi, 2020). Also of note, Nagle (2014) embedded herself in DSNY and wrote a descriptive anthropological study of its garbage collecting Sanitation Workers. From this MIT department, Neilson’s master’s thesis (2009) took an early look at case studies of citizen initiated, decentralized community-scale compost processing that predated the City’s work to collect and process compost at scale. This thesis builds on that work now that NYC has coalesced a network of community composting partners through a PNPP. Outside of SWM, there have been several studies about NYC’s community gardeners, urban farmers, and environmental stewardship organizations that are relevant in the significant overlap that exists between these actors and the city’s community composters. This includes STEW-MAP, a longitudinal effort by the U.S. Forest Service to map the network of environmental stewardship organizations operating throughout NYC’s five boroughs and in the Northeast more broadly, as well as their governance structures and network of relationships (Connolly et al., 2013; Fisher et al., 2012; Jasny et al., 2019; Svendsen et al., 2016; Svendsen and Campbell, 2008). Contributing to this subject, Cohen and Reynold’s work in “Beyond the

17 / 97

Kale” centers the work of people of color and women in NYC’s urban agriculture movement as they build on gardening’s inherent co-benefits to address multiple forms of social and political oppression, “to achieve food system, environmental, economic, and social justice,” (Reynolds and Cohen, 2016: 16). Although there is not perfect overlap between urban gardeners, farmers, and composters in NYC, the communities share space and people and are deeply intertwined and influenced by one another, as evident in some local compost organizations’ commitments to social justice.

3. Theory and Research Questions Given the existing literature, this thesis will seek to fill in a few gaps. First, the PPP literature in SWM often fails to state clear distinctions between programs that rely on public-private-for-profit partnership, and those that rely on public-nonprofit partnership, with potential sub-groupings of volunteer organizations that are not officially incorporated. This study will focus on PNPPs and take those sub-variations in organizational governance into account, particularly as they affect an entity’s ability and organizational capacity to enter government agreements. Second, the literature regarding PPP and PNPP’s impact on socially equitable access to public SWM programs is inadequately explored, so this study will further that work by explicitly evaluating equity as it intersects with the nonprofit organizations represented in DSNY’s PNPPs. Given Andrews and Entwistle's (2010) findings that public-private-for-profit partnerships result in decreases in service equity, and their finding no significant relationship between public-nonprofit partnership and equity I will expand on the theory to explore the relationship between NYC’s PNPP model as it relates to equitable access in the City’s organics

recovery programs. I will examine how decisions about the formation of the City’s PNPPs network, like how partners were identified and chosen, affected the distribution of its services across the city’s geography, income groups, and other demographic factors.

This study’s approach is informed by theories of environmental justice (EJ) as they seek to expound the distributional equity of environmental services and facilities. Converse to its typical focus on the siting of hazardous waste and environmentally toxic sites, this study asks about the geographic, racial, and economic equity of the provision of new sanitation services that are designed to introduce an environmental benefit. In line with Melosi (2006) this study’s EJ foundation is centered around environmental services and impacts as viewed from an

18 / 97

anthropocentric lens that regards their impact and implications for human populations rather than the ecocentric focus of more mainstream American environmental movements. Extending this approach, the research builds on the strategy in Caputo et al. (2021) to introduce “people” as a factor of analysis in their proposed Food-Energy-Water-People (FEWP) Nexus framework in urban agriculture projects. Rather than a pure analysis of the geographic access or environmental benefit from organics recycling, this project will highlight the social dimensions of NYC’s organics recycling programs. In line with “people” focus the FEWP Nexus, these social dimensions include system inputs like labor, human capital, knowledge, and experience, and outputs like health, education, profit/jobs, and social bonds, (Caputo et al., 2021). In doing so, the thesis will be among the first to advance Carolini and Raman 's (2021) call to take a finer-gain look at the geographic and demographic distribution of services on an intracity basis by implementing a high-resolution picture of the racial, ethnic, and economic conditions of the areas served under NYC’s organics recycling PNPPs. Finally, in line with the CWIS, this study conceptualizes equitable service provision as proactively prioritizing a city’s most marginalized communities.

While much has been said about the importance of engaging local community-based organizations and stakeholders for the uptake and adoption of new municipal services (Joseph, 2006), there is work to be done to scrutinize the equity implications that materialize by relying on private, and particularly nonprofit and community-based partners for public services. This project asks if the types of organizations that are engaged in a PPP affect its ability to equitably serve diverse communities. Do the PNPPs have adequate evaluation processes in place to ensure that their programs align with NYC’s political focus on social equity? How can DSNY take measures to ensure that network coverage results in accessible options for all city residents? In addition to examining the PNPPs from an equity lens, this study has the unique vantage to examine the system under crisis as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every form of public life in NYC. In this context, the paper extends its inquiry to assess how a monumental shock to the partnership that threatened its continued existence led to downstream effects on

service equity. The study asserts the hypothesis that relying on a network of nonprofit and volunteer

organizations decreased DSNY’s ability to provide equal access to organic drop-off and pick-up services throughout the city. This is predicated on the fact that the organizations directly partnered with in the NYCCP were all preexisting entities that developed in areas with higher propensity for environmental stewardship, or greater capacity for volunteer governance, which

19 / 97

coincides with wealthier and more resourced communities, but which are not necessarily inclusive in their coverage of the city’s most marginalized peoples.

4. Methodology This thesis conducts a mixed methods analysis of NYC’s compost PNPPs and their

effects on equitable service. The project uses interviews to form a descriptive and qualitative understanding of the PNPP’s setup, operations, and work, supports findings through a desk review of relevant publications by the City, the sanitation agency, and the nonprofit partners, and conducts a geographic analysis of the services’ footprints. The resulting descriptive case study examines the system longitudinally, assessing how the programs’ operations shifted from their inception to their current form, as well as organizationally, dissecting the roles that partners played, the relationships that formed between them, which organizations were included, and which were excluded. Through these methods, the case study collects the data required to perform an “analytic generalization” to assess whether empirical findings conform to the project’s theoretical framework and support the hypothesis, (Yin, 2008: 38).

This detailed description of the organics collection and processing system in NYC began with a desk review of all relevant publications and budgetary documents from the Mayor’s Office, the Department of Sanitation, and other City agencies, as well as publications by the PNPP’s partner organizations. Findings in the desk review supported qualitative interviews with the people who work in and collaborate with the partner organizations, as well as people working in the field, but outside of the PNPPs. The research involved collecting multiple perspectives about the PNPPs to describe a network that “no single person could

have observed in its totality,” (Weiss, 1995: p9). The author assembled a “panel of informants” on the organics recovery systems in NYC

and sought to recruit people who understand and interact with the system at various levels, and from differing vantages (Weiss, 1995: 18). In total, this included conducting 16 semi-formal interviews with actors operating across NYC’s composting landscape. The semi-structured interviews used a modular and predetermined set of questions to ensure coverage of all relevant topics while still allowing the conversation to address points of interest. Questions were excluded or included based on the informant’s relationship to the system. Interviewees were asked additional follow-up questions to elaborate on answers that could be more clearly

20 / 97

or completely explained. The 16 interviews included two current and former DSNY personnel, two community composters, three private micro-haulers, and nine employees at nonprofits partnered with DSNY. These affiliations are described as of the interview time, however there was a high degree of fluidity between rolls within the group. For example, people working as private micro-haulers and community composters had previously worked as staff at DSNY partner organizations, and multiple interviewees had been employed by more than one nonprofit partner. With permission, interviews were recorded, and transcripts were automatically generated. In every interview the researcher maintained his own set of notes. Interviews were scheduled in the months of March and April, 2021. The interviewees represent a range of experiences throughout the case study’s focus, some directly involved in the PNPPs, and some peripherally involved, or excluded. The initial sources were those who either had their contact information publicly listed, or for whom the author had contact information. At the conclusion of each interview, the researcher asked who else he should interview to learn more about the subject. Through this process, the number of informants snowballed, broadening the perspectives accounted for in the study. The interview process concluded when the researcher felt that findings reached a saturation point, and that each additional instance provided a diminishing amount of new information. Informants shared their perspectives in confidence, and some shared information that may not be viewed favorably by partnership administrators. To protect sources’ privacy and prevent any retaliatory actions, the interviews have been anonymized by group. When cited hereafter: DS1 and DS2 represent the two DSNY personnel; CC1 and CC2 represent the two community composters; MH1, MH2 and MH3 represent the three micro-haulers, and NP1-NP8 represent interviews with the nine nonprofit partner employees (two were interviewed together).

In addition to conducting interviews and reviewing published articles, press releases and reports about the system, there is a wealth of open data publicly available about the NYC waste management system, and the City in general. The project uses this data to offer quantitative findings about the City’s compost programs and examine the geographies that

had access to different services. This data includes the tonnage of organic waste (as well as refuse and recyclables) picked up by DSNY trucks, the tonnage of food scraps dropped off at DSNY affiliates, the districts served by DSNY curbside organics programs, the locations of food scrap drop-off sites, their hours of operation, and their operators, and data about City contracts. The geographic data was combined with demographic data from the American Community Survey (ACS) 2014-2019 5-year estimates to understand which income levels,

21 / 97

racial, and ethnic communities had access to different services. When ACS data is used, it is done so at census block group resolution, comprising 6,493 zones throughout NYC. Block groups each represent a relatively small area (a few square city blocks) so it was determined that block groups should not be split, and demographics proportionally calculated, so as to avoid misleading characterizations, particularly for household income levels. Therefore, block groups are considered either served or not served in the analysis, never partially served. An area is considered served for the purpose of this analysis if 20% or more of its land cover area falls within a service zone. For drop-off sites, a block group is considered served if it is within a 10-minute walk (approximately a half mile) of the collection point. Walking times were measured through network analysis along street centerlines using the Quantum GIS (QGIS) plugin Open Route Service Tools that utilizes on Open Street Map networks. If competing services overlap in a block group, the block is attributed to the service that covers a larger proportion of its land area.

While geographic analysis helps develop a quantitative understanding of the system’s equity in concert with qualitative interview findings, there are many shortcomings of pure geographic analysis that are important to keep in mind. Purely geographic investigation forgoes a

deeper analysis of the urban context surrounding food scrap drop-off that includes a

characterization of how accessible a site may be on foot, or how commonplace it may be to walk in the area of the drop-off site at all. It may also not account for physical barriers that would obstruct access to a drop-off site within close proximity, like the presence of train yard, or a dangerous-to-cross arterial road. It also fails to account for the temporal variability of food scrap drop-off sites.

Many sites are only open during certain hours of the day, or on specific days of the week, and a static representation of a site’s service area does not capture this temporal barrier to access. Because of this, additional figures are included to represent the hours of operation at drop-off sites.

Geographic analysis also does not include information about the accompanying social infrastructure that exists around drop-off sites, including community engagement and education programs that effect a site’s participation and engagement. Finally, the data analyzed only

represents that which is publicly published by DSNY and its partner organizations. Although the researcher did thoroughly clean and normalize the data, it is not entirely comprehensive, and does not include any community composting facilities and drop-off sites that have elected not to list as public food scrap drop-off locations on DSNY’s online materials. Many of the missing sites do not

serve the general public, and some serve only a subset of the public like community garden members or public housing residents. Additionally, the geographic coverage areas of organics

22 / 97

micro-haulers are not included in the analysis. This is because they are not always hard set, and because not every micro-hauler lists exact boundaries for its service area. Additionally, micro-

hauler service is not freely accessible in the same way as curbside organics pick-up and drop-off sites, and it is charged by the pick-up frequency or amount of material. In summary, the story of access to organic waste collection services in NYC is more than a question of geography. It is a formula of geographic and temporal access, social infrastructure, and ability to pay. Due to the

many shortcomings of geographic and quantitative analysis, this thesis addresses and elucidates these gaps through the inclusion of insights from the people who operate the system, both within and outside NYC’s official municipal composting programs.

Finally, a note on the author’s positionality. The researcher has been closely involved in NYC’s organics recycling programs since 2015. He is a certified Master Composter by DSNY and has volunteered dozens of hours towards the collection and processing of organic material with

multiple nonprofit organizations that partner with the Sanitation Department, and which will be examined in this study. To that end, he has pre-existing personal relationships with a few of the subjects interviewed which influenced his ability to secure the interviews, how the conversations went, and the degree of comfort that interview subjects had with the researcher. In addition to

having volunteered with the nonprofit partners studied in this thesis, the author has previously worked in a NYC nonprofit that provides composting education, collection, and processing outside of DSNY’s partnership model, among other services.

5. A History of Organic Waste Diversion in NYC Organic waste separation in NYC builds on efforts to divert waste from landfills that began

in the 1970s in line with the rise of the mainstream American environmentalist movement. Although the movement promoted recycling, composting and waste-to-energy, NYC prioritized the separation of inorganic recyclable materials. In 1970, Mayor John Lindsay’s administration prompted the creation of the City-affiliated private nonprofit Council on the Environment of New

York City (CENYC), later to become GrowNYC (GrowNYC, 2020). In the spirit of the first international Earth Day, the organization initially focused on publishing policy reports about quality-of-life issues like air quality, traffic, and noise. Environmentalism took hold at the national level in

1970 with the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Congress’ passage of the Resource Recovery Act, which shifted waste policy from disposal towards recovery and recycling initiatives, (Melosi, 2020: 297). In 1978, NYC and DSNY published the first ever “Solid Waste Masterplan” that promoted local refuse diversion efforts, (Melosi, 2020: 298). A 1985 study

23 / 97

published by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) stated that a recycling program with a 40% diversion rate would be cost-competitive with its alternative waste-to-energy plants, giving Mayor

Ed Koch the impetus to launch a pilot curbside recycling program in June 1985 to five residential neighborhoods, (Melosi, 2020: 321). DSNY had a “tepid response” to this initial pilot, skeptical that EDF’s 40% diversion was achievable in its 3-year projection, (Melosi, 2020: 321). In 1985 the

agency established the Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling (BWPRR, now called Bureau of Recycling and Sustainability), but by 1990 the City’s recycling rate sat at just 6.5%,

(Melosi, 2020: 335). 1989 Local Law 19 mandated household recycling and set a goal of 25%

diversion by 1994, followed by doubling the funding allocated to recycling programs to $43 million between 1989 and 1990 fiscal year budgets (Melosi, 2020: 335). The City’s curbside recycling program continued to expand through the decade until it served all 59 Community Districts in 1997.

During the growth period of the City’s curbside recycling program, environmental advocates were successful in adding organic waste recycling to the agenda. One result of this was the 1991 “Intensive Zone Pilot” (IZP) program in which the City included municipal curbside organics

collection as an additional source-separated recycling stream. The pilot communities were Park Slope, Brooklyn, a relatively affluent, majority White neighborhood with brownstone row houses, and Starrett City, Brooklyn, an East New York private development consisting of 46 “tower in the park” style high-rises, 11-20 stories tall, that house relatively low-income, majority Black residents,

(Bagli, 2007; U.S. Census Bureau, 1990a, 1990b). The pilot was not a success, and DSNY decided to discontinue municipal organics collection. The agency cited the low volume of material diverted and the financial and environmental expense of operating truck routes that did not reach capacity in

its decision. The Starrett City pilot had particularly low participation rates, “where concerns over odor and vermin seemed to override any other considerations,” and the department faced more logistical challenges to centralizing each building’s waste for pick-up, (Lange, 2001). DSNY’s experience operating this program would inform the agency’s approach to future organics recycling

initiatives, and its differentiation of organics pick-up services for large multi-unit buildings in future work. Outreach efforts launched in tandem with the IZP were the precursor to the City’s PNPP education programs. Shortly thereafter, the New York City Compost Project (NYCCP) launched as a

DSNY initiative in 1993, coinciding with a growing national consciousness about the benefits of separating organic waste from municipal solid waste streams. The remainder of this chapter will detail the growth of NYC’s household organics recycling programs.

24 / 97

5.1 Launching a Public Nonprofit Partnership:

The New York City Compost Project The City began municipal efforts to divert organic waste from the landfill waste stream, also

called refuse, in the 1990s. The early years of the NYCCP focused on education initiatives and supporting residents and small organizations that processed food scraps into compost at the community level. It would be almost another two decades until DSNY shifted its focus to making household organic waste collection a priority through its food scrap drop-off (FSDO) locations, and even longer until DSNY worked to roll out a municipal curbside organics recycling program. According to DSNY, the NYCCP “works to rebuild NYC’s soils by providing New Yorkers with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities they need to produce and use compost locally,” (“NYC Master Composter Manual,” 2019). Dividing compost processing into three levels, (1) household, (2) community, and (3) industrial, the NYCCP works to support household and community composting activities. Level one involves composting at the household level where food scraps are generated. Level two involves composting at community-level sites that congregate people to process food scraps from multiple households together. The NYCCP is a public-private partnership through which DSNY’s BWPRR first partnered with the city’s premier horticultural institutions to educate the public about the benefits of composting organic waste and provide support to the city’s existing community composters. Through the initiative, DSNY funds staff lines at partner organizations to conduct trainings and offer limited support to the community-level gardens and organizations processing compost in their borough. The NYCCP’s initial partners were the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) in the Bronx, the Queens Botanical Garden (QBG), the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG), and Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden (SH) on Staten Island, (see Table 1, pg 25 and Figure 2, pg 26).

The NYCCP is a form of PNPP, and at the time it was established in 1993 it required creative budgetary mechanisms to realize within the regulations of NYC’s municipal spending. The partnership administrators at DSNY’s BWPRR felt that NYC’s flagship horticultural institutions were well positioned to deliver compost education and outreach services to the public because of their infrastructure for public engagement and the link between composting and gardening, (Int. DS2, 2021). At the time, there was not an extensive landscape of volunteer and nonprofit organizations that worked specifically on composting organic waste. Of the

groups that did have this focus, many were small, volunteer operated, or non-incorporated

25 / 97

groups that the City did not have a simple legal and financial framework through which to establish a partnership. Among these small nonprofits was the Lower East Side Ecology Center (LESEC), which had established the city’s first household food scrap drop-off site at the Union Square Greenmarket and processed organics on the Lower East Side. Although BWPRR contacted LESEC, they were reluctant to enter a City partnership at the time, (Int. NP2, 2021). Under its City Charter, NYC agencies are not permitted to contract with unincorporated entities, prohibiting most financial support and or interaction with volunteer and community operated initiatives. In order to contract with a particular vendor of its choice without opening a competitive procurement process, an agency must pursue a “sole source” contract, (NEW YORK CITY CHARTER, 2021: §321). The arduous process takes multiple years, approvals in

different financial regulatory bodies, a period for public objections, bids, and responses, and finally approval by the NYC Comptroller. If DSNY sought to administer the PNPP through a regular contract it would need a sole source arrangement or else be required to release a public request for proposals (RFP) for the education and outreach services it sought and accept the lowest qualified bidder. The BWPRR circumvented this process by funding the NYCCP through an interagency modification by which DSNY passed a portion of its budget to the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), (Int. DS2, 2021). The DCLA had existing contractual relationships with these horticultural nonprofits and passed DSNY funds for the NYCCP to the four partners. An interagency modification does not require the same level of scrutiny as a sole proprietor contract and that enabled DSNY to directly control which nonprofits it collaborated with to provide the NYCCP’s educational programs and technical support. Although NYC adopted sole source regulations to curb government corruption and

Organization Acronym Neighborhood Founded Joined NYCCP Teaches a MC Course

Processes Public Household Waste 2018 Budget

New York Botanical Garden NYBG Jerome Park, Bronx 1891 1993 Yes No 87,475,985$

Queens Botanical Garden QBG Flushing, Queens 1939 1993 Yes Yes 23,530,093$

Brooklyn Botanic Garden BBG Prospect Heights, Brooklyn 1910 1993 Yes Yes* 23,143,825$

Snug Harbor SH Saint George, Staten Island 1975 1993 Yes Yes 5,135,113$

Lower East Side Ecology Center LESEC Lower East Side, Manhattan 1987 2005 Yes Yes 1,303,578$

Earth Matter EM Govenors Island 2009 2011 No Yes 554,126$

BIG Reuse BRLong Island City, Queens;

Gowanus, Brooklyn2011 2011 No Yes 2,996,355$

GrowNYC (a.k.a. Council for the

Environment of New York City)n/a Operates citywide 1970 n/a No No 16,555,822$

*BBG processes organic waste offsite at Red Hook Community Farm

Table 1: Organics Recycling PNPP Partners. Table by author.

26 / 97

establish rigorous checks on public spending, they also make it difficult for organizations with few financial and legal resources to navigate a complex approval process. The choice to use an interagency modification to realize the NYCCP was a pragmatic decision to work with NYC’s leading horticultural institutions instead of other entities that may have delivered the service like smaller nonprofits, private companies, or non-incorporated volunteer groups, but which would have been prohibitively difficult for the agency to collaborate with under NYC law.

For its first five years of operation, staff at the horticultural institutions went about promoting household composting and offering technical support to existing community composters at gardens and elsewhere. In addition to hosting workshops for home composters, the staff at the botanical partners utilized existing networks of connections with community gardens within their home boroughs to support community composters. The NYCCP describes community composters (CC) as an operation that “involves the people of a community working together to compost at a shared site,” and goes on to specify that “sites can be located in a wide range of places, such as schools, community gardens or urban farms, places of worship,

Figure 2: New York City Compost Project partner locations. Visualization by author.

27 / 97

community centers, parks, or donated space on private properties,” (“NYC Master Composter Manual,” 2019: 4-2). These organizations typically collect food scraps and process compost on-site at a small scale. They often use commercially available garden composting containers, or three-bin compost systems, which limits the amount of organic waste they can process. The CCs who benefit from NYCCP partner technical assistance will be referred to as NYCCP affiliates in this thesis from here on. Many CCs are not primarily dedicated to composting operations, (places like schools, or community centers), and many are non-professional organizations that are volunteer operated and not incorporated. Assistance included technical advising on compost processing and formulas, material procurement like tools and composting containers, and strategies for odor and rodent abatement. The NYCCP partners each track the CCs who they assist, however there is not a comprehensive published list of all CCs. Having now established technical assistance resources for home and community composters, the department tried its hand at a systematic effort to encourage at-home composting.

In 1997, DSNY conducted a pilot backyard composting program and paired it with an intensive program evaluation. The study selected four census tracts, one from each borough besides Manhattan where households could opt-in to buy a $10 composting bin from DSNY to use in their own backyard. The tracts were in Morris Park (Bronx), Marine Park (Brooklyn), West Brighton (Staten Island), St. Albans (Queens), with an additional control tract in Little Neck (Queens). Most of the housing stock in the pilot areas had access to private backyards where residents could compost, and therefore the tracts selected represented a higher proportion of single-family homes, and higher rate of homeownership than the citywide average, (Lange, 1999). DSNY conducted a waste stream composition audit in the areas before the pilot to understand the potential for diversion. The borough-based NYCCP botanical garden partner conducted outreach to the households in the selected tracts by mail, phone, and door-hangers for residents to opt-in and receive a bin. 9.4% of targeted residents opted in (Lange, 1999: 11). The study found that residents who opted in to receive bins generally enjoyed working in their

gardens far more than those who did not, (Lange, 1999: 60). 100% of volunteers had also had some experience or familiarity with composting as opposed to the 60+% of pilot area residents who chose not to participate, (Lange, 1999: 63). The study found that if the opt-in rate scaled citywide to the 25% of NYC residents with backyard access, a citywide backyard composting program would divert just 0.15% of residential refuse and recycling pick-up. Ultimately, the agency determined that such a program would not be cost-effective for DSNY, although they

28 / 97

note that their calculation did not include the “environmental and neighborhood” benefits whose costs would not accrue to DSNY. Additional outreach and education could increase opt-in and diversion rates but given the pilot results and a market analysis survey of 800+ New Yorkers the agency determined there was not the foundation for a cost-effective household composting program. With the results of this study in-hand the agency justified its continued focus on encouraging and training active gardeners to expand their household and community composting capacity through the NYCCP, but to hold back on the roll-out of larger municipal efforts.

As the NYCCP found its legs DSNY encountered New Yorkers who were deeply committed to composting as a means of direct environmental action, and in some cases community building. Feeling that these devotees could benefit from a more in-depth technical training regime, and that there was potential to expand their ranks and extend community composting practices to more locations, the Master Composter (MC) program was born in 1998, (Int. NP7, 2021). The MC certificate program educates approximately one dozen people annually in each borough and is open to the public, however participants must apply to DSNY and be accepted to enroll. The program is aimed to support people who already work with compost in some way, so acceptance is prioritized for people who volunteer at a community garden, teach, or work in a related job. The program is a three-month long course that meets for 3 hours on weekday evenings and introduces participants to the science and practice of urban compost processing. To receive the certificate, course participants must also volunteer for 30 hours to support compost operations at a NYCCP partner organization or affiliate. The course requires that participants cover $40 for course materials. The weekly course meets at the location of the NYCCP partner in each borough, and in Manhattan the course was taught at the Museum of Natural History by NYBG personnel. The investment that DSNY made in the MC education program sought to engage participants as community catalysts providing labor and education in a “train the trainer” model. Master Composters volunteer at NYCCP supported gardens, or work in a compost-related industry, and educate others in their network

about composting as a credible messenger. Through this strategy, the NYCCP pursued a “multiplication effort” by which certified MCs worked to extend the initiative’s impact beyond the direct assistance available from NYCCP partners, (Int. NP7, 2021). While the Master Composter program formed the core of NYCCP and DSNY’s composting education initiatives, the program was limited in its scope and reach. The course’s location (see Figure 2, pg 26), limited class size, 60-hour commitment (at least half on evenings), material cost, and limited

29 / 97

marketing all affect who has had access to the MC certification. The decision to operate a limited enrollment course that trained roughly 60 MCs each year meant that it primarily served New Yorkers who already had some connection to organic waste recycling in NYC. The course’s location at private botanical gardens, institutions with paternalistic and exclusionary histories may have been another factor that affected participation, however by all accounts the conservatories used the program as an effort to expand their outreach into local communities through the relationships built with community organizations. Although Master Composters in multiple cases catalyzed community compost work, the lack of more broad-based and accessible compost education programming limited the reach of the NYCCP’s early educational programming.

With the MC training certification, and support for CCs, DSNY began to support community-level, and fringe efforts to divert organic waste from the refuse stream, however it did not represent a systemic shift in the way that NYC collects and processes organic waste on a large scale. To separate household organic waste from other refuse, residents would need to be at least peripherally involved in community composting efforts, with no programs made available to serve the general public. After two pilot programs tried and failed to set the seeds for more comprehensive citywide composting efforts, the BWPRR did not have DSNY or political support for more significant investments. Under this circumstance, the BWPRR turned back to PNPP to extend organics recycling options for New Yorkers, educate the public, and build demand for municipal organics recycling efforts.

The PNPP efforts of the NYCCP saw the first major threat to their operations in 2001, as NYC reeled from the devastating impacts of the September 11th terrorist attack at the World Trade Center. With an exodus of banking firms from the financial district, and the enormous costs associated with recovering from the attack, the City plunged into its worst financial crisis since the 1980s. To balance its budget, the City made the decision to eliminate DSNY’s still pilot curbside recycling pick-up program as well as the NYCCP. Without funding from the Sanitation Department, all but one nonprofit partner laid-off its NYCCP staff. The sole

exception was the Compost Project Program Manager at the NYBG, who the organization chose to keep on staff through its own funding sources, (Int. NP7, 2021). They did so upon seeing the connections that the garden had fostered to surrounding communities in the Bronx through the Compost Project’s assistance for community gardeners. The MC course had been cancelled along with NYCCP funding, and without any peers, the NYBG’s lone compost-dedicated employee tried her best to keep up with the demand for composting assistance from

30 / 97

all five boroughs. Without municipal support, the future of the NYCCP and composting initiatives in NYC more broadly were uncertain.

5.2 Making it Work: Food Scrap Drop-Off Programs After a three-year hiatus in action, the NYCCP came back online in June, 2005 when

NYC Council included funding for the effort in its fiscal year 2006 budget. Council Members moved at the behest of community advocates who demanded that the City get its organics recovery initiatives back on track to meet its environmental goals, (Int. NP7, 2021). Many of those advocates were MCs, trained by the NYCCP between 1998 and 2001, who had been working to make CC a reality in their own neighborhoods. Without the technical support of the NYCCP and its accompanying person-power and training through the MC program, these CC sites faced worse odds at success. When the program came back online it took on a new form. Now, in addition to its role supporting CCs, and training MCs, the administrators at BWPRR sought to directly serve the public through the creation of food scrap drop-off for household organics.

This new goal meant extending the NYCCP to include a new partner in the nonprofit Lower East Side Ecology Center. LESEC had been collecting household organics at the Union Square Greenmarket now for over 15 years and was the largest CC in NYC. To date, it had survived through philanthropic support, but was poised to outgrow the community gardens where it composted its organics collections. In 2005, when DSNY reengaged its four botanical garden partners in the NYCCP, it brought on LESEC to teach the MC course in Manhattan and create the first mid-scale CC facility in the city. With DSNY’s help, LESEC was granted office and park space on NYC Parks Department land in the Lower East Side’s East River Park. With a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to operate on City land, LESEC built out a mid-scale CC demonstration site, increasing the capacity that they could process from drop-off collections. Through the expansion of its PNPP, DSNY had entered its first foray into directly funding the collection and local processing of household food scraps within NYC.

During this period, DSNY expanded the number of FSDO sites open to New Yorkers by publicly listing NYCCP affiliate CCs who were willing to accept household food scraps from people unassociated with the site. To do so, the NYCCP partners worked with the CC affiliates

31 / 97

they supported to sign them up to for public FSDO listing. CC FSDO locations were advertised using an interactive map on DSNY’s website that pinpoints a CC’s location and displays the hours that it is open for public drop-off. Due to their volunteer or unstaffed composting operations, the drop-off services at CCs are highly variable. Some have inconsistent hours of operation. A few are community gardens that require key access to drop-off food scraps. Some have volunteers present during drop-off hours while others do not. Some are highly visible and use NYCCP provided signage to advertise their FSDO location, while others are difficult to find and access. Due to inconsistency, volunteer operation, and limited collection and processing capacity, community operated FSDO locations serve a small number of New Yorkers. In addition to these site-by-site irregularities, the geographic areas served by these FSDOs were dependent on the areas where CCs were already in operation. As part of their training, MCs were encouraged to establish CC sites in their neighborhoods if they weren’t already present. In 2019, CCs collectively processed 3,051 tons of compost citywide, just 0.28% of the city’s overall estimated organic waste generation. These FSDOs operated by

organizations outside the NYCCP can be collectively considered community operated FSDO

sites. Many of these CC sites are informal volunteer organizations, or community-affiliated

organizations like schools and churches whose main purpose is not composting. Seventy eight percent of NYC’s CCs are entirely volunteer operated (DSNY, 2014a: 20). The CCs that are professionally staffed organizations often do not have staff time dedicated to composting

operations (for example, schools where a teacher volunteers to manage the school garden and composts on top of their normal responsibilities). The level of assistance that the NYCCP could offer CCs that take public food scraps was limited. It typically includes providing a few related materials including signage to designate a site as a NYCCP FSDO (see Figure 3, pg31),

Figure 3: Food Scrap Drop Off site signage. Left two provided by DSNY, right community made. Photographs by author.

32 / 97

branded woven-plastic sacks to store finished compost, and at some sites hand tools for compost processing like shovels, compost cranks, and ice scrapers1. Partners also had access to teaching materials used in the MC course upon request. The 30-hour volunteer requirement of the MC course also served to provide additional volunteer labor at CC affiliates. The CC organizations that DSNY supports also serve as an outreach vehicle to advertise the Master Composter course, and many CCs either have a participant who obtained the MC certification, or work with volunteers who have. Today, 27 years since the trainings began, it’s common to find MCs working and volunteering at CCs around NYC. “In my mind, you're not at a garden composting if you don't have at least one Master Composter there… That's, how embedded the NYCCP has [become],” (Int. MH2, 2021). As one source put it, they can go to any CC and ask, “Who’s the MC here?” (ibid.).

Alongside public listing for community operated FSDOs, DSNY piloted the

implementation of staffed FSDO locations in partnership with GrowNYC, the nonprofit formerly

called Council on the Environment of New York City. Despite being a registered 501c3 organization, GrowNYC is closely tied to the NYC government, and five spots on its board of directors are reserved for the commissioners of related City agencies, the departments of: Sanitation; Environmental Protection; Parks and Recreation; Transportation; and Health and Mental Hygiene. The organization maintains its own budget and is partially funded through philanthropic donations, with roughly one third of its revenue from government sources in 2019 (GrowNYC, 2020b). As part of its work to improve New Yorker’s quality-of-life and reduce the city’s environmental footprint, GrowNYC has operated pop-up Greenmarkets in NYC since 1976, (GrowNYC, 2020b). With 76 markets operating throughout NYC’s five boroughs in 2019, the Greenmarket program offered an opportunity for the NYCCP to expand drop-off collection service to more communities. At least two Greenmarkets already had compost drop-off stations operated by nonprofits and volunteers, the first in NYC at the Union Square Greenmarket operated by the LESEC, and the second at the Fort Greene Greenmarket operated by Fort Greene Compost Project, a volunteer-led group propelled by MCs, whose

1 Compost cranks are used to turn compost piles, and ice scrapers are used to chop food scraps into smaller chunks pre-processing.

33 / 97

members would go on found Earth Matter (EM) on Governors Island. The concept for this new effort was thanks in part a Master Composter who worked in GrowNYC’s existing recycling and sustainability programs. Since 2007, the nonprofit had held a partnership agreement with DSNY’s BWPRR to conduct sustainability education programs, including public recycling education, collect recyclable textiles at its greenmarkets, and train Environmental Ambassadors (residents at NYC public housing). The agreement transferred responsibilities previously in the purview of the BWPRR’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education (OROE) to the private nonprofit, resulting in a nearly indistinguishable separation between OROE and GrowNYC’s sustainability programs. According to one agency source, contracting-out these zero waste education and outreach initiatives was demoralizing to DSNY personnel at BWPRR, whose civilian staff were well positioned and eager to drive this work, (Int. DS1, 2021). This soured the relationship’s start and hindered the coordination between DSNY and GrowNYC. Although the head of GrowNYC’s zero waste programs was reportedly reluctant to incorporate organics at the time, the MC embedded in the organization helped broker the partnership, (Int. DS2, 2021). With a pre-existing contract, it was relatively straightforward to extend the funding

and workplan to include FSDO services, and the BWPRR again avoided the headache of NYC’s arduous procurement processes.

Figure 4: GrowNYC greenmarket food scrap drop-off station. Credit: GrowNYC.

34 / 97

In 2011, GrowNYC hosted its first Greenmarket FSDOs at six markets, (GrowNYC, 2020b), thanks to funding awarded by the City Council. At staffed FSDO sites, GrowNYC personnel were present to manage the organics collection receptacles, greet the public, and inform people about separating and recycling organics. GrowNYC Greenmarkets typically set up once or twice each week at set locations, with some operating four times weekly and markets throughout all five boroughs, (See Figure 4, pg 33). The relative impermanence of these staffed FSDOs differentiates them from the community operated FSDOs which typically collect food scraps in the same location where they process it. In contrast, staffed FSDOs could “pop-up” in areas without community composting capacity, serve as a collection point for a few hours per week, and deliver their material to be processed elsewhere. The pilot City Council Greenmarket program was a success and DSNY expanded its activities with GrowNYC to include FSDO operations at more Greenmarkets. In 2015, GrowNYC also incorporated food scrap drop-off services with its Fresh Food Box and Farmstand programs that are designed to serve affordable produce to lower income neighborhoods. The partnership between DSNY and

Figure 5: New York City Compost Project Food Scrap Drop-Off Sites by Operator Group. Visualization by author.

35 / 97

GrowNYC represents the agency’s second compost PNPP, and from here forward, DSNY PNPPs will refer to both the NYCCP and GrowNYC partnerships. See Figure 5 (pg 34) for a map of FSDO locations by operator group.

In addition to GrowNYC staffed locations, the five borough-based NYCCP hub partners began operating staffed FSDO locations. These pop-ups would also appear at set times on a certain day of the week but were not necessarily associated with a market. Some were “commuter compost stations” which operated near transit stops during the morning rush hour to make it convenient for New Yorkers to drop off their household compost on the way to work, (See Figure 6). In 2017 GrowNYC launched similar “Compost On-The-Go” program that created 18 pop-up FSDOs near transit stations in northern Manhattan and the Bronx. Both of these pop-up programs outside the Greenmarkets were designed to extend the geographies served to areas with less access to organics recycling. Although DSNY originally hauled the material dropped off at GrowNYC’s Bronx “Compost On-The-Go” locations, the agency pulled this service after one year due to low tonnage, however the nonprofit continued to serve these locations and haul the material itself, (Int. NP1, 2021). The GrowNYC Greenmarket partnership and the establishment of staffed FSDOs enabled collection efforts to reach a larger geography than the NYCCP had previously served with just CC partners.

With expanded access to drop-off locations through staffed FSDOs, New Yorkers were composting more household organic waste than ever. Whereas before, community operated FSDOs typically processed their collection on-site, the food scraps collected at staffed FSDOs

most often had to be transported to a location with processing capacity. For each of the five borough-based hub partners that meant trucking the organic waste from their staffed FSDOs back to their main facility, except for BBG that processed their collections at partner organization Red Hook Community Farm (at the time called Added Value), which operates the largest fossil fuel-free composting facility in the United States. GrowNYC does not have its own compost processing facilities but, through its Greenmarket collections it was

Figure 6: Uptown Grand Central Fresh Food

Box “Compost on-the-go” drop-off. Credit: GrowNYC

36 / 97

accumulating the most food scraps. For the pilot Greenmarket collections in 2011, DSNY contracted with private hauler Action Carting to transport organics to a recycling facility outside of NYC, however DSNY sought options for local processing, (Int. NP2, 2021).

Under these conditions, DSNY established the Local Organics Recovery Program (LORP) in 2012 under BWPRR which included GrowNYC and the three largest CC processing facilities in New York City: BIG Reuse (BR, at the time called the Western Queens Compost Initiative); Earth Matter (EM); and the Lower East Side Ecology Center (LESEC). Of these organizations, only LESEC had existed when the NYCCP launched in 1993, and even then, only as a small nonprofit, newly minted in 1987. Among the founders of the other two processing nonprofits were people trained as MCs, exemplifying the efficacy of the MC training at expanding local compost processing capacity. A few years later LORP would be dissolved in favor of a direct contract between GrowNYC and DSNY, and the inclusion of the three CC compost processing partners into the NYCCP, to set its current seven partners: NYBG, QBG, BBG, SH, BR, EM, and LESEC, (see Table 1, pg 25). In expanding the NYCCP, DSNY encountered the same obstacles to including new partners as it had when initially funding the PNPP, namely that it could not directly contract with the compost processors it identified as the most suitable collaborators. In the process of establishing LORP, BWPRR had reached out to every mid-scale nonprofit CC operating in the city that it was aware of and elected to work with the three that were receptive to the partnership, EM, BR, and LESEC, (Int. DS2, 2021). In order to get funds to these organizations DSNY built upon its interagency modification with DCLA, increasing funds to its horticultural NYCCP partners who then subcontracted composting to the new processing partners. In 2019, DSNY made another move to rationalize its FSDO programs and delineate responsibilities when it consolidated the operation of all staffed FSDOs under GrowNYC, (Int. NP1, 2021). Under the consolidation, NYCCP partner staff continued to provide technical support to CCs, teach the MC course, and process compost, but no longer staffed FSDOs. With the new CC organizations onboard, the NYCCP expanded from its work in education, outreach, and technical support for CCs, towards collecting household food

scraps and building local composting capacity.

Curbside Organic Recycling Pilot With the expansion of public FSDO locations, DSNY had launched it efforts at collection and processing through its PNPPs, just as it had for the NYCCP’s early education efforts.

37 / 97

However, the drop-off collection service offered at these sites was hindered by multiple obstacles. The FSDO locations were available in limited locations, at limited hours of the day and required households to deliver their waste relatively far distances in many cases. While access was available, it was still only serving the few households whose time and location would allow, and who were self-motivated to recycle organic waste. Local advocates were calling on the City to expand its organics recovery efforts, and many believed that implementing curbside organics collection, mirroring the City’s now widely adopted recycling program was the answer to serving more New Yorkers, specifically those who were not reached by FSDOs.

In 2013, NYC Local Law 77 launched the largest municipal curbside organic waste pick-up program in the United States under DSNY (DSNY, 2015), seeking to divert an estimated 34% of the city’s waste stream comprised of organic material (DSNY, 2017). The pilot program sent DSNY Sanitation Workers to collect organic waste from residential buildings in typical trash compactor trucks, to be centralized and transported to processing facilities. DSNY distributed small 13-gallon and 21-gallon brown bins to all eligible buildings to hold organics for pick-up.

Although DSNY’s curbside collection program represented NYC’s largest public sector effort to collect and process organic waste to date, the program did not reach most households. The pilot program was implemented in stages, like recycling had been done, with a plan to eventually expand throughout the whole city. Service rolled out to zones aligned with NYC’s community district boundaries, which DSNY also uses as operation zones for its garages. The program pilot launched in 2013 in Staten Island’s North Shore and Throggs Neck, Bronx, covering just parts of two of the city’s 59 community districts.

As the program rolled out, regular curbside pick-up districts reached every borough except Manhattan, (See Figure 7, pg 38). The program served all residential buildings in target community districts with 9 units or fewer, which were not located on commercial corridors. Residents in ineligible buildings (those with 10 or more units and those on commercial

corridors) were encouraged to continue using FSDO facilities or use neighboring building’s brown bins.2 In Manhattan and most areas of the central and south Bronx curbside organics pick-up was offered as an opt-in service for buildings of 10 units or more. To join the program

2 DSNY mailed stickers to curbside pick-up eligible buildings that could be affixed to the top of the brown bin and invite neighbors to deposit their food scraps.

38 / 97

and receive weekly organics pick-up service from DSNY, building management companies or owners had to submit an application to DSNY. In return, DSNY supplied accepted buildings with brown bins to be set at the curb by building operations staff on pick-up days. Buildings that were originally ineligible within regular pick-up zones were eventually able to opt-in, like those in Manhattan and the Bronx.

The determination of pilot districts for curbside pick-up was a fairly opaque process, with different sources citing different theories. DSNY states that it selected the initial Staten Island and Bronx districts because their low and medium density more closely resembled the residential density of other “cities where precedent has been set for successful organics collection programs,” and that pick-up in those areas posed fewer operational challenges (DSNY, 2014a: 13). Multiple sources believe that the Staten Island and Bronx districts first on the list were those that generated the largest amount of yard waste. Operating in these residential, single-family home neighborhoods was operationally less challenging than rolling out in dense neighborhoods with apartment buildings, because DSNY would not need to enlist

Figure 7: Year of First Household Organics Curbside Pick-up by Community District. Visualization by author.

39 / 97

the buy-in of building management and operations personnel who may have been uninterested in the additional work required to separate organics with no mandate to do so. The low-density residential areas piloted also have higher incomes than the citywide average. After these first phase districts, there is more speculation about DSNY’s reasons for electing districts in which to expand. Some sources believed that the agency prioritized areas with active CC organizations where education initiatives had had greater penetration. One source inside DSNY suggested that the driving force was labor agreements with DSNY Sanitation Workers, (Int. DS1, 2021). The creation of organics pick-up routes meant additional work at any garage tasked with piloting the brown bin program, and workers at some garages were more willing than others to volunteer for the job. They recall that the entire process of district selection involved a great deal of union labor negotiations. The piecemeal approach that this resulted in, however led to a difficult to manage roll-out. The curbside recycling program expanded in phases until regular pick-up service eventually covered 3.5 million New Yorkers, (DSNY, 2019: 3).

The large increase in organic waste collected through DSNY’s curbside pick-up program meant that the agency needed a corresponding increase in compost processing capacity. With processing capacity at the city’s CCs devoted to serving FSDOs, the agency had to look elsewhere. Some curbside collection was transported to the Sanitation Department’s Staten Island Compost Facility co-located with the Staten Island Martine Transfer Station at Fresh Kills and operated by WeCare Denali LLC, however, the majority was transported outside of New York City to private processing locations, (see Table 5, pg 55 and Figure 15, pg 56). DSNY does not make clear where it delivers all of the City’s organics collection, and no source asked knew. Some information about the facilities where DSNY delivers material is available in the agency’s budget documents, but not data about the amounts deposited. This lack of transparency has drawn criticism from CCs and advocates, who decry the agency for displacing the city’s waste outside municipal bounds and forfeiting the benefits of its finished compost. The organic waste processing capacity of regional operators falls short of that

necessary to recycle NYC’s entire organic waste generation, (Int. DS1, 2021). This problem has at times drawn press and has inspired scandals where people claim that organics collected in the curbside pick-up program are actually mixed back into the landfill waste stream. These mysteries in the organic recycling chain may have damaged the organics recycling program’s reception and diversion rates in NYC. Shortages in processing capacity have also been cited in the limited roll out of the City’s curbside collection program, with DSNY slowing its rate of

40 / 97

expansion as the program grew. Despite these shortcomings, DSNY nor the City have offered visible solutions to address the shortage in processing capacity through programs to build capacity at existing processing sites, or initiatives to encourage the establishment of new ones.

5.3 Private Organics Collection and Processing Finally, in addition to the FSDO sites operated through the PNPPs, and the municipal curbside organic waste collection program, a growing industry of private organic waste haulers has emerged to serve residential customers. In NYC, DSNY picks up waste at residential buildings and schools, however commercial waste pick-up is handled by the private sector. Businesses and commercial building operators must contract directly with private waste haulers to collect their waste and recyclables. Therefore, an existing industry of private waste haulers had long existed to serve the NYC’s commercial buildings. The private carting industry has a long history of corruption and connection to organized crime in NYC (Melosi, 2020), and in 2002 NYC formed the Business Integrity Commission (BIC) specifically to “eliminate organized crime and other forms of corruption and criminality from the commercial waste hauling industry,” (BIC, 2021). BIC therefore oversees most private hauler regulation in coordination with DSNY. Some, but not all these private haulers began to collect organic waste separately, typically charging for the separate service. Very few commercial carters serve households directly. In addition to the major commercial waste haulers already in operation, an ecosystem of small compost micro-hauler organizations began to emerge. These micro-haulers are differentiated from other commercial waste haulers in their mission-driven focus on organics recycling, and their local non-industrial processing, often done by the hauler itself. In line with their environmental missions, some also use non-truck collection methods (like vans, bicycles, and electric vehicles). Although this paper focuses on residential organics recycling in NYC, these private haulers are significant for two reasons. First, some micro-haulers do serve residential clients and will collect organic waste from households for a fee. Second, commercial haulers and micro-haulers deliver organic waste to some of the same processing facilities, therefore further straining the NYC’s already stretched organic processing capacity.

Finally, there are several nonprofit and community operators that service NYC residents outside the purview of DSNY’s PNPPs. Since organizations must opt-in to be listed as public FSDO sites, there are some that have by choice or inaction remained unaffiliated with the network. Organizations and volunteer groups may choose not to affiliate with the NYCCP if

41 / 97

they do not wish to serve the general public with collection services, but instead cater to a specified population. While these organizations are part of the overall set of operators working in compost collection and processing in NYC, they do not represent a large portion of the organic waste diverted from the refuse stream.

This chapter introduced the history of compost collection and processing in NYC from the 1990s to present. Through a mix of the PNPP’s FSDO sites, both staffed and community operated, DSNY’s curbside organics collection program, and the operations of commercial haulers and micro-haulers, NYC residents have gone through a changing landscape of organics collection services. Despite their variety, the services detailed in this section have not come close to collecting and processing most of the organic waste generated by NYC households (see Table 2, pg 41). The services’ great variety, inconsistency, and limited geographic service areas and operation hours have all contributed to an unequal subset of who is served by organic recycling services in New York City. In the next chapter, we take a close look at who is served by which services where.

tons % of total organics

tons collected by NYCCP Partners and

Grow NYC

tons collected by NYCCP affiliated

CCs

% of total organics tons % of total

organics

2011 - - - - - - - 1,092,532

2012 - - 209 23 0.02 - - 1,057,049

2013 595 0.06 720 232 0.09 - - 1,048,833

2014 4,623 0.44 1,505 325 0.17 - - 1,048,472

2015 8,309 0.79 1,704 408 0.20 - - 1,046,631

2016 11,221 1.06 1,824 483 0.22 3,107 0.29 1,059,476

2017 23,251 2.18 1,725 451 0.20 2,365 0.22 1,065,150

2018 35,087 3.24 2,064 468 0.23 3,592 0.33 1,082,679

2019 32,834 3.04 2,527 524 0.28 2,377 0.22 1,078,683

2020 8,601 0.75 2,103 446 0.22 148 0.01 1,143,464

Curbside Brown Bin Organics Pickup Estimated Total

Household Organics (tons)

Household Yard Waste PickupFood Scrap Drop Off

Year

Table 2: Organic waste diversion by collection type. Analysis by author.

42 / 97

6. Organic Waste in Systems in NYC As detailed in the previous section, NYC has not made significant progress towards the

large-scale collection and processing of most household organic waste since efforts began in the 1990s. Today, there are four major groups of collection and processing agents in NYC:

1. NYCCP project members and affiliates (PNPP); 2. DSNY curbside collection (public); 3. Commercial haulers and micro-haulers (private for-profit); and 4. Nonprofit and community organizations unaffiliated with the NYCCP (private nonprofit)

Looking strictly at residential composting DSNY curbside collection program collected the largest tonnage of organic waste while the program was in operation, even as a pilot program with limited geographic scope. In 2019 DSNY curbside pick-up collected 32,834 tons, compared to 3,051 tons collected and processed by CCs, (see Table 2, pg 41). Before the 2020 pandemic, the City reached its peak organics collection and processing capacity in 2019. The previous section detailed the history of municipal action and partnerships that characterized NYC’s organic waste diversion initiatives. With this base, and a familiarity with the differences in collection and processing types, the current section seeks to describe the system as it operated at its peak capacity.

43 / 97

6.1 Collection Organic waste collection in NYC may be divided into drop-off and pick-up services. These

two collection types are not equal in their “level of service” for residential customers. Drop-off service requires more work on the part of the resident to deliver their own food scraps to a centralized local collection point at a FSDO site. Such effort can be prohibitive for people short on time, people with ambulatory disabilities, or people who simply find organic waste disgusting and do not wish to transport it (the “yuck factor”). Many FSDO’s limited days and hours of operations also mean that residents must time their organic waste drop-offs within a particular window, (see Figure 9, pg 45, Figure 10, pg 46 and Figure 12, pg 49). Compared to drop-off service, pick-up service offers greater convenience to residents. However, public DSNY curbside organics collection is limited in its geographic service area and its building eligibility, and private haulers and micro-haulers charge a fee to pick-up residential organic

Figure 8: NYC Block Groups by Food Scrap Drop-Off Access. Visualization by author.

44 / 97

waste. Thus, both drop-off and pick-up organic waste collection services are hindered by barriers to participation.

Multiple entities operate drop-off collection services. Pre-pandemic, the PNPPs operated and advertised the majority of FSDO sites through staffed locations operated by the PNPP partner organizations, and community operated locations run by CCs. Collectively, DSNY advertised 166 unique FSDO locations in 2019. Of these, 12 sites were operated by the seven NYCCP partners, 55 sites were operated by GrowNYC, and 99 sites were community operated by the NYCCP’s 70 affiliated CCs. A handful of local and citywide nonprofits also operated FSDO sites unaffiliated with the NYYCP. Finally, some private waste haulers, micro-haulers, and businesses in related industries (like horticulture and landscaping) also operate publicly accessible FSDO sites. FSDO sites have their highest concentrations in Manhattan, the city’s densest borough, and as of 2019 were not available in every community. FSDO sites are free to

Food Scrap Drop-Off Access Census Measure Mean 25th Percentile Median 75th Percentile

Median H.H. Income 78,612$ 41,199$ 66,270$ 102,242$

Race: Black (alone) 22.1% 1.9% 10.5% 36.9%

Race: White (alone) 44.7% 17.2% 41.5% 71.9%

Race: Asian (alone) 11.8% 1.1% 6.0% 15.9%

Ethnicity: Hispanic 32.7% 9.5% 23.1% 54.6%

Median H.H. Income 93,060$ 54,120$ 82,258$ 125,905$

Race: Black (alone) 16.2% 0.9% 5.9% 23.1%

Race: White (alone) 54.2% 25.9% 61.1% 78.3%

Race: Asian (alone) 12.2% 2.7% 8.1% 17.2%

Ethnicity: Hispanic 27.0% 6.9% 16.7% 41.4%

Median H.H. Income 62,448$ 36,628$ 55,900$ 80,329$

Race: Black (alone) 35.0% 4.8% 24.7% 63.8%

Race: White (alone) 33.8% 11.2% 27.4% 55.5%

Race: Asian (alone) 9.3% 0.0% 3.3% 12.9%

Ethnicity: Hispanic 36.1% 14.4% 28.6% 57.9%

Median H.H. Income 72,987$ 49,692$ 68,750$ 89,196$

Race: Black (alone) 25.5% 0.8% 7.5% 47.8%

Race: White (alone) 43.3% 13.5% 40.2% 71.8%

Race: Asian (alone) 15.3% 1.0% 6.8% 23.2%

Ethnicity: Hispanic 24.4% 7.0% 16.7% 36.6%N = 6,425 NYC Census Block Groups

Any FSDO Access

Only Accessto Staffed FSDOs

(NYCCP & GrowNYC)

Only Access tocommunity

operated FSDOs

No FSDO Access

Table 3: Census Demographics by Food Scrap Drop-Off Access Type. Analysis by author.

45 / 97

use, and some that are not operated by NYCCP partners ask for a suggested donation of up to five dollars.

Using demographic data about income, race, and ethnicity from the ACS, we can see who is served in the areas around FSDO locations. Figure 8 (pg43) shows the block groups that have access to different FSDO types, differentiating the block groups that have access to only staffed FSDOs, only community operated FSDOs, or to both types. Table 3 (pg 44) and Figure 11 (pg 47) offer descriptive statistics and plots of those different groupings. The analysis reveals that areas with access to FSDOs are generally a little wealthier and have slightly fewer non-White residents than areas without FSDO access. It also shows that the staffed FSDOs directly funded by DSNY through its PNPPs serve the wealthiest and Whitest block groups of any of the four access groupings, while community operated FSDOs serve the least White and poorest areas. This means that the FSDOs that receive the most DSNY resources, staffed locations, are serving the most well-off communities. You can see large swathes of this staffed

Figure 9: Food Scrap Drop-Offs, Number of Open Hours per Year. Visualization by author.

46 / 97

FSDO access type in brownstone Brooklyn, and the Upper East Side, some of NYC’s wealthier enclaves. One reason for this may be that these areas have high land values, and fewer open lots for community gardens, making it necessary to host temporary drop-off sites. In contrast, areas in Brownsville, East New York, Far Rockaway, and the west Bronx that house more Black, brown, and low-income residents only have access to community operated sites. This again, may be an artifact of the presence of open land for community gardens, however these volunteer operated FSDOs have no backup or redundancy from City-funded staffed FSDOs. These findings run contrary to the hypothesis, which assumed that existing CC locations would serve wealthier areas. In fact, DSNY PNPP funds directly support more well-off block groups while community volunteers are left to serve more marginalized communities.

If we look at the times that FSDOs are open we also note trends that affect access equity. First, the preponderance of drop-off locations operate during normal workday hours 9am-5pm, while open FSDOs in the morning are less common, and drop-offs open after 5pm are even less so, (see Figure 10, pg 46 and Figure 12 pg 49). In Figure 12 it’s also evident that drop-off access varies by day of the week and time of year, with more FSDOs open during the week than on the weekend. These factors combined may limit access to FSDO services for people who work standard weekday hours and do not have flexibility in their work schedule.

The two major entities operating pick-up collection services in NYC are DSNY with its curbside organics collection program, and private haulers and micro-haulers. DSNY’s curbside brown bin program diverts more organic waste than any other initiative through once-per-week pick-ups in select residential neighborhoods. For that program, DSNY distributed brown organics recycling bins to all eligible households within the service area. These included 13-

Figure 10: Food Scrap Drop Offs, Open Hour Times of Day. Visualization by author.

47 / 97

gallon bins for single and two-unit buildings, 21-gallon bins for buildings with 3-9 units, and 32-gallon bins for opt-in buildings with 10 or more units. Residents place their household organic waste in the brown bins and place them at the curb to be collected by DSNY Sanitation Workers.

Like FSDO access, we must look closely at who has access to curbside compost pick-up. First, by requiring people who live in larger multi-unit residential buildings, and failing to serve NYCHA developments, DSNY’s municipal pick-up service most likely serves a less diverse population, as more low-income residents, and New Yorkers of color live in these arrangements. If we look at the ACS demographics in Table 4 (pg 48) we note that all three types of areas (regular, opt-in, and no pick-up) are similar in their income levels, however, DSNY curbside service serves Whiter communities, while areas with more Black residents are not was wells served. If we consider regular pick-up to be a better service than opt-in pick-up because of its consistency and ease of use, then DSNY’s municipal collection program does serve a more diverse and lower-income mix of New Yorkers than FSDOs. That means that the City’s purely public organics recycling option has a more equitable and demographically representative geographic coverage area than the agency PNPPs’ collection efforts. Such a

Figure 11: Census Block Group Racial and Ethnic Demographics by FSDO Access Type. Analysis by Author.

48 / 97

finding must be tempered by the fact that there are social and other immeasurable benefits aside from collection that accrue to communities that have access to community composting. Aside from DSNY’s curbside organics program, some households also have the option to contract directly with an organic waste hauler. Most commercial waste haulers in NYC focus on the commercial and office market, where DSNY does not pick up any types of waste, and so businesses must contract with a private waste hauler directly. Due to this existing circumstance, very few large-scale commercial haulers advertise an option for households to pay for their own organic waste pick-up. Instead, a number of small-scale micro-haulers have emerged to serve the residential organics recycling market. These micro-haulers typically pick up organic waste residential doorsteps with pre-arranged pick-up times. Some accept bagged compost, while some provide their own small bins that they swap during pick-up times. Most haulers allow households to determine their required pick-up frequency with the average being once per week. Some haulers will not pick up more than once per week. Rates for micro-hauler pick-up vary greatly, and some companies charge along a sliding scale based on household income. For weekly pick-ups, the service ranges from $17.50 - $56 per month. Micro-haulers are generally small operations. A few are sole proprietor businesses, and no micro hauler

Curbside Organics Service Census Measure Mean 25th Percentile Median 75th Percentile

Median H.H. Income 74,729$ 50,833$ 70,357$ 93,125$

Race: Black (alone) 20.9% 0.6% 5.4% 31.5%

Race: White (alone) 47.4% 20.7% 47.1% 73.4%

Race: Asian (alone) 17.5% 1.9% 8.7% 26.9%

Ethnicity: Hispanic 22.9% 8.1% 17.5% 33.1%

Median H.H. Income 79,479$ 32,722$ 57,585$ 113,280$

Race: Black (alone) 21.1% 2.6% 14.1% 34.8%

Race: White (alone) 43.2% 14.3% 33.1% 74.5%

Race: Asian (alone) 8.6% 0.0% 4.0% 12.1%

Ethnicity: Hispanic 39.8% 9.4% 38.7% 67.4%

Median H.H. Income 71,363$ 54,085$ 69,943$ 85,541$

Race: Black (alone) 36.0% 1.9% 18.3% 73.0%

Race: White (alone) 36.4% 7.9% 28.1% 61.7%

Race: Asian (alone) 12.2% 1.3% 5.9% 17.6%

Ethnicity: Hispanic 23.4% 6.5% 15.2% 32.0%

N = 6,425 NYC Census Block Groups

Regular Pick-up

Opt-in Pick-up

No Pick-up

Table 4: Census Demographics by Curbside Collection Access. Analysis by author.

49 / 97

identified had more than 11 staf1f listed. It should be noted that a significant portion of NYC’s micro-haulers are minority and women owned businesses, whether officially registered by NY State or not. Some are incorporated as businesses and worker-owned cooperatives, and some operate in the informal economy. While commercial waste haulers require BIC registration, micro-haulers that serve households are not as closely regulated by the agency. Organics micro-haulers submit a special agreement with BIC annually that exempts them from other registration. The agreement structure is designed to encourage environmentally beneficial organizations, by setting a 500 ton/year cap on micro-haulers that pick-up by truck, and a 2,600 ton/year limit on zero-emission haulers, (Danberg-Ficarelli et al., 2020). Some micro-haulers also offer organic waste pick-up services to commercial businesses.

6.2 Processing Processing NYC’s organic waste has

become a persistent challenge since the City began initiatives to promote food scrap recycling. The organic processing capacity within NYC can handle only a small fraction of the total organic waste generated by its households, and limited options exist to recycle the waste regionally. This section will first review the organic recycling processing activities that happened within the city and will then discuss regional options. There are three broad types of compost processing happening with household organics in NYC: (1) On-site by source; (2) community composting; and (3) industrial composting. The NYCCP is designed to support types one and two. Alongside industrial

Figure 12: Open Food Scrap Drop-Off sites by time, day and month. Analysis by author.

50 / 97

composting, the City also delivers some of its organic waste to anaerobic digestor facilities that breakdown organic waste through a different process than composting.

In New York State, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is the regulatory agency responsible for licensing compost processing facilities (under 6 CRR-NY 361-3.2). The DEC separates composting facilities into three categories: (1) exempt; (2) registered; and (3) permitted. Exempt sites are any that process waste generated on-site or compost a total amount less than 1,000 lbs. or 1 cubic yard each week. Exempt sites do not require operators to notify the agency or have regulatory oversight. Registered sites are those that exceed exempt levels and process less than 2,500 tons, or 5,000 cubic yards per year. Registered sites may not be located within 200 feet of any waterbody, residence, or place of business, which makes them particularly challenging to site in NYC’s high-density environment. Registered sites must sign up with the NYS DEC and are required to submit written plans for run-off and odor management, as well as preliminary temperature readings for their processing material. Finally, the largest composting facilities in NYS are permitted sites that process more than 2,500 tons, or 5,000 cubic yards per year. These sites require a special permit from NYS DEC to operate, must submit additional planning documents to DEC, comply with certain design requirements designed to control run-off, odors, and pests, and submit an annual report on intake and output activities to the state regulatory agency.

The first of the three, on-site composting by the generating source is the most straightforward and the most environmentally beneficial. This process includes any method that residents use to compost their waste in their own home or garden. These methods include vermicomposting (worm bins), bokashi composting (anaerobic fermentation), and in-vessel methods (like aerated bins, tumblers, and 3-bin systems). All of these methods (with the exception of vermicomposting and in some cases bokashi) require outdoor space to operate. In addition, these methods involve a portion of the resident’s time. These techniques can handle many types of household food scraps well, but cannot easily decompose meat, fish, bones, and dairy products because smaller volumes of compost cannot reach high enough

temperatures to kill pathogens and break down the material. Compostable plastics may also stretch these systems beyond their limits. In 1999, 36% of NYC residents surveyed by DSNY

51 / 97

had access to a side yard or backyard, (Lange, 1999: 59). That proportion has likely decreased in the subsequent 20 years with the majority of new units in NYC added in multi-unit apartment buildings. Because of these limiting requirements, on-site household composting is fairly uncommon in NYC and is primarily practiced by those who actively tend a home garden. While on-site composting does not benefit from any efficiency of scale, it does have the lowest environmental impact because no fuel is required to pick up and transport waste, and the fertilizing benefits of the compost are often used directly in home gardens. Given its space and labor requirements, home composting is clearly not a scalable solution to handle the majority of NYC’s household organic waste. At the next level up are Community Composting sites, locations where some collection of people work together to process food scraps from multiple households. CCs can be further divided into two levels. One level are small-scale community gardens and processing sites managed entirely by volunteers, and the other are mid-scale processing sites managed by nonprofits and micro-haulers with professional staff. All CCs operate on some amount of public volunteer labor; that forms the primary distinction between CCs and industrial facilities. Many

source collection

GrowNYC / NYCCP

processing reuse

disposal

NYCHouseholdOrganic Waste

1.1 milliontons/year

source separtation

organicsrecycling

mixed with landfill waste

DSNYcurbsidetrash collection

DSNYcurbsideorganicspilot

Private haulers &micro-haulers

Staffed pop-up FSDOs

Community operatedFSDOs

on-sitesmall-scale composting

Mid-scalenonprofit community composting

industrial composting

On-sitefertilization

NYC Parks

Free public compost pickup

transfer

Waste Transfer Station Landfill or incineration outside NYC

DSNY

regional

DSNY

Small-scaleon-sitecommunitycomposting

haulers

haulers

DSNY

no transport

transfer

no transport

no transport

NYCCP

NYC Parks

Saleno transport

drop-offpickup

Neg

ativ

e En

viro

nmen

tal I

mpa

cts

Home& backyardcomposting

Figure 13: Organic Waste's Journey from Household to Disposal or Reuse. Visualization by author.

52 / 97

of the non-partner organizations affiliated with the NYCCP are small-scale CC sites where organics are processed into compost through primarily volunteer labor. Small-scale CCs tend to rely on 3-bin systems, aerated bins, tumblers, trench composting, and small windrows to turn household food scraps into compost. Like household composting, most small-scale CCs cannot handle meat and dairy products or compostable plastics. The compost produced at small-scale CCs is often used in on-site gardens, taken home by volunteers, or used for local environmental stewardship activities like street tree care. In addition to processing compost some small-scale CCs also serve as community gathering and green spaces and offer an opportunity for New Yorkers without access to a garden at home to compost their organic waste themselves. A likely majority of small-scale CCs have at least one NYCCP-trained Master Composter who helps to manage the site through work or volunteering. Additionally, some CCs rely on NYCCP personnel hosted by the borough-based partners for technical assistance and support. Small scale CCs like community gardens are not required to have any special permit from the NYS DEC to process compost. The processing capacity at small-scale CCs is typically no more than a few thousand pounds per year so most must be judicious about the amount of food scraps they are willing to accept at any given time. Most of the compost processed at small-scale CCs is used on site, distributed to the public, or used for local environmental stewardship activities. A step higher than these small-scale operations are the mid-scale CCs. Although CCs all utilize volunteer labor, all mid-scale CCs also have paid staff that work to manage the site. There are around a half dozen mid-scale CCs across NYC’s five boroughs. Some mid-scale CCs are exempt from NYS DEC registration requirements, and some are registered sites. The amount of space required and the siting limitations on registered facilities makes these mid-scale CCs difficult to establish in NYC where high residential density and expensive land prices preclude most locations. Mid-scale CCs usually process larger capacities than are suitable for in-vessel composting and usually rely on windrow and open bay processing techniques. They

53 / 97

use differing degrees of manual and machine labor, including devices like forced air blowers, small tractors, rotary tumblers, and toter-tippers. The amount of machinery used on-site is inversely proportional to a site’s public accessibility for safety reasons. Since these mid-scale operators are all CCs, and a core part of their work is engaging the public and volunteers in the process of composting, most operators are not entirely reliant on machine processing

techniques. The mid-scale CCs serve as educational demonstration sites for NYC’s composting community, and therefore make an effort to exemplify clean and organized composting practices. These sites require a high amount of labor relative to the amount of compost they process, in part because they are tasked with education and outreach activities, and in part because their labor-intensive sorting and composting

practices produce very high-quality compost. The compost produced at mid-scale CCs is used on-site, distributed to the public, used for local environmental stewardship activities, and a portion is used in NYC public parks. The primary processing partners in the NYCCP are all mid-scale CCs. These facilities include NYCCP partners Earth Matter on Governors Island, the Lower East Side Ecology Center in Manhattan, BIG Reuse’s two sites in Long Island City, Queens and Gowanus, Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s compost facility at the Red Hook Community Farm (RHCF). All of these sites are located on land owned by NYC or quasi-governmental nonprofits. The LESEC, RHCF, and BR’s Queensbridge sites are all located on NYC Parks

Department property. The Salt Lot operated by BR in Gowanus is located on DSNY property, sharing space with Sanitation’s local salt shed. EM operates on Governors Island under the auspices of the government affiliated nonprofit The Trust for Governors Island. All of these nonprofits hold MOUs with their respective landlords that enable them to operate at their facilities. In addition to the NYCCP processing partners, some nonprofits and businesses also operate mid-scale CCs like East New York Farms and BK Rot, both in Brooklyn.

Figure 14: Earth Matter, a mid-scale community compost processing facility. Credit: Earth Matter NY.

54 / 97

The organic waste processed at mid-scale CCs originates from a combination of sources. Some, like RHCF compost yard and garden waste produced on-site, but all NYCCP partners receive some proportion of the food scraps deposited at drop-off locations. Of the NYCCP processing partners, EM and BR’s Queensbridge site handle the majority of material, with GrowNYC delivering roughly 40% of its Greenmarket food scraps to each site respectively, (Int. NP1, 2021). While processing capacity is larger at mid-scale CCs than small-scale CCs like community gardens it is still relatively small. For example, all but one site (Earth Matter) are exempt from NYS DEC registration requirements because they do not process enough compost.

Given the enormous amount of organic waste that NYC households generate, and the relatively small processing capacity for on-site and CC operations in NYC, the City ends up relying on various kinds of industrial composting to handle the majority of its output. Industrial composting facilities face similar barriers to location in NYC, and so most of the organic waste collected by the curbside brown bin program was trucked to facilities throughout the surrounding region. Industrial composting facilities operate without public access or volunteers, and typically rely on machinery to assist in the process. There are four industrial composting facilities operating in NYC. Three are owned by DSNY and one is private. DSNY sites are the 33-acre Staten Island Compost Facility at Fresh Kills, a facility on Rikers Island that handles the jail’s organic material, and the Soundview Compost Facility in the Bronx which only processes yard waste. These three sites combined only processed 30,500 tons of material in 2016, (Rosengren, 2017). Some material is also processed by the by anaerobic digestion at the NYC DEP Newtown Creek Wastewater treatment plant on the Brooklyn-Queens border. There is one privately operated facility in Queens. All of Staten Island’s organics are processed at the local DSNY facility, while some of the waste collected in other boroughs went to the digestor at Newtown Creek, however all the in-city processing capacity represents a small portion of that required for DSNY’s total organics pick-up.

The bulk of DSNY’s curbside collection is trucked to ten different privately operated

industrial facilities outside of NYC, across five different states, ranging from 54 to 253 road miles away as far as the Finger Lakes region of New York State (see Table 5, pg 55 and Figure 15, pg 56). DSNY works with contractors WeCare Organics, Waste Management Inc., and Brooklyn Transfer to transport the organic material. Of these ten facilities seven compost the organic material and three use anaerobic digestion processes to capture natural gas from the decomposing waste. These private companies sell the compost they produce. Gas harvested

55 / 97

from the digesters is either used to generate power on-site or refined for commercial distribution by tank or pipeline. Two of the primary criticisms levied against DSNY’s curbside organics program are that it shipped organic waste far outside the city, increasing vehicle miles traveled and adding to the recycling process’ carbon footprint, and that the beneficial recycled products from the city’s food scraps (compost and power) do not benefit city residents. The agency has also been criticized for not being explicit about how much organic waste is delivered to each of their processing contractors and the material’s source.

Facility Name Location Recycling Process Collection Source Road Miles from NYC

Ag Choice Newton, NJ Compost not specified 54

New Milford Farms New Milford, CT Compost not specified 80

McEnroe Farm Millerton, NY Compost not specified 99

Quantum Biopower Southington, CT Anaerobic Digestion Queens 105

Pine Island Farm Sheffield, MA Anaerobic Digestion Queens 117

Wilmington Organics Recycling Center (Peninsula Compost)* Wilmington, DE Compost not specified 122

Gro-Max Ltd. Hudson, NY Compost Queens 123

Delaware County Co-Composting Facility, NY Walton, NY Compost not specified 148

WeCare Environmental Marlborough, MA Compost Bronx 196

Cayuga County Digester Auburn, NY Anaerobic Digestion Bronx 253

NYC DEP Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Brooklyn, NY Anaerobic Digestion Bronx; Queens; Brooklyn; NA

DSNY Fresh Kills Compost Yard Waste Staten Island, NY Compost Staten Island; Brooklyn NA

Table 5: Regional Organic Waste Recyclers that Receive DSNY Brown Bin Material. Source: DSNY reports and budgetary documents.

* Peninsula Compost is now closed.

56 / 97

7. NYC Compost Under Crisis The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic levied the most significant shock to NYC’s compost

collection and processing activities since the NYCCP’s inception in the 1993. In March of 2020, as the COVID-19 infection and death rate soared NY State locked down by prohibiting most public and commercial activity. Under this lockdown NYC decreased its revenue projections for FY20 and FY21 by $7.4 billion, and in April proposed FY21 cuts of $3.4 billion (3.7% of the City’s $89.3 billion budget), (City of New York, 2020). Some reductions immediately affected municipal agencies, including DSNY. Agency-wide cuts of $120 million included a $21 million

Figure 15: Processing Facilities Outside NYC that Received DSNY Brown Bin Organics. Visualization by author.

57 / 97

cut to the agency’s compost initiatives, halting all programs. That included curbside brown bin collection, and all support to the PNPPs supporting community compost education programs and FSDOs. With the funding cut, came layoffs for nearly all NYCCP staff at partner organizations. NYCCP partners were ordered by DSNY to immediately stop accepting food scraps. The remaining staff composted any organics left at their facilities. New Yorkers who had previously relied on DSNY’s compost programs had few options to deposit their organic waste other than the refuse bin.

The few remaining options for organics recycling collection were stretched beyond their capacity. A handful of small-scale CCs, like some community gardens, opened public FSDOs in the spring but had no access to any NYCCP support. Those that remained open to the public saw demand soar as New Yorkers converged on them with nowhere else to go. They were soon overwhelmed with organic material, and some had to turn the public away for lack of space and processing capacity. Seeing the huge demand and a lack of services to meet it, a handful of individuals and private companies sought to address the problem by opening new FSDO sites to the public. Without public funding, these efforts collected suggested donations at their drop-off point. Among the organizations to do this were the micro-hauler Common Ground Compost that set up a FSDO on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the landscaping firm Nature Based that setup a FSDO in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and concerned residents who set up the Astoria Pug FSDO in Queens. With the doors closed at the NYCCP processing partners, these organizations either transported the material to organic recycling facilities outside of NYC themselves, or paid commercial haulers to pick up the waste, (also to eventually be delivered outside NYC). Those interviewed who provided such a service say that donations did not cover the cost of operation, (Int. MH3, 2021). In every case identified these temporary FSDOs were opened for their service to fellow New Yorkers and not as a means to generate a profit, (ibid.,

Nierenberg, 2020). With municipal pick-up paused and NYCCP affiliated FSDOs closed, private micro-

haulers that serve residential clients also saw a spike in demand. Every micro-hauler interviewed shared the similar experiences of a sudden surge in residential customers, and a challenge to keep up with collection and processing. Green Feen Organix, a small worker-owned cooperative micro-hauler that serves customers in the Bronx saw its residential clientele jump from roughly five customers in 2019 and collecting one ton per year, to forty customers by August of 2020 and collecting about one ton each month. Similarly, Common Ground Compost saw its residential customer base jump from around 10 clients pre-pandemic to its

58 / 97

current list of approximately 70 households. While this increase meant more income from residential customers, in many cases it was also an abrupt shift in a micro-hauler’s operations. Many micro-haulers had previously focused on serving commercial and office customers who have never had a municipal organic pick-up option. When restaurants, offices and other businesses shuttered during the pandemic, those customers dried up overnight. The surge in residential clients helped to offset this sudden shortfall, but some micro-haulers that had built their businesses on commercial service did not recoup their losses. “Our revenue dropped by 75% and then we were down roughly 30% by the end of the year,” (Int. MH3, 2021). For BK Rot, a micro-hauler serving Brooklyn, the company had previously shifted from serving mostly residential to more commercial clients as DSNY rolled out brown bins to serve households but pivoted back to residential service under the circumstances. The sudden drop in access to organics collection also inspired new entrants to NYC’s micro-hauler scene. Individuals who had previously worked at and volunteered with NYCCP partners and affiliates leveraged their compost knowledge and expertise to start collecting organics from their neighbors, either by setting up public FSDOs, or entering informal arrangements to collect food scraps at residents’ doorsteps.

Despite the new activity by private actors, only a fraction of the food scraps previously diverted from the waste stream were being collected, but even that pushed in-city processing capacity to it limits. Many micro-haulers compost some or all of their collection at small processing sites in NYC, but like community gardens, these facilities were overflowing, or in the case of NYCCP partners, closed. In response to this crisis, micro-haulers and community composters got creative. An artist and community composter designed a performance piece in which he trench-composted his audience’s food scraps in a NYC public park in demonstration of the illegal means required to recycle food scraps when DSNY shut down its organics collection programs. Similarly, with no sanctioned place to recycle food scraps composters described “guerilla composting” activities wherein they took to empty lots, parks, and unused spaces to compost residential food scraps under stealth. Without the organic diversion of

DSNY’s brown bin program and the capacity of NYCCP’s mid-scale processors to compost FSDO collections, local organic waste recycling efforts were breaking down.

In recognition of this state of emergency, a collection of individuals, community composters, compost-related organizations and companies organized to form two activist organizations, the #SaveOurCompost coalition (SOC) and the Community Composting Coalition. The former was primarily comprised of concerned residents who wanted access to

59 / 97

compost their household waste, while the latter was a collection of laid-off staff from the PNPP partner organizations. The two coalitions would merge under the Save Our Compost banner. Beyond altruistic values, current and former NYCCP personnel joined in the interest of restoring their program and jobs, micro-haulers joined hoping to access municipal procurement opportunities and facilitate a favorable business environment, and nonprofit and volunteer groups sought access to City funding and support. While DSNY played no role in assembling the coalitions the connections fostered among community composters during NYCCP’s 27 years of operation played a part in connecting coalition members. For example, an online Google Group email list for trained MCs and community composters helped to recruit supporters. As the SOC formed, it gained structure through the added capacity of the organizing nonprofit New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYCEJA), and legal aid nonprofit New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI) that both provided staff support. With an understanding that DSNY’s curbside organics program cost much more to operate than its FSDO services and the City’s dire financial straits in mind, the coalition agreed that it was essential to restore funding for drop-off collections which meant advocating the City to fund the PNPPs with GrowNYC and NYCCP.

On May 14th, 2020, the New York City Council held its Committee on Finance meeting to hear public comment on the FY 2021 preliminary DSNY budget and the SOC coalition came prepared. In lieu of DSNY’s former $48 million compost programs, the coalition proposed a lean $7 million to restore the operations of the PNPPs forgoing an ask for curbside service that that coalition members deemed unachievable at the time. SOC organizers had urged its supporters to call their Council Member’s offices specifically about the issue, and the effort was met favorably by NYC Council Members, many of whom see environmental protection and justice as an important issue to their constituents. As a result, the Council Members decided to fund a small portion of DSNY’s composting programs to enable the reopening of public FSDOs. In the final FY21 budget compost programs secured $2.86 million in funding, well below SOC’s $7 million ask and just 10% of its pre-pandemic funding level, (Muoio, n.d.).

With the end of City funding in April and its partial return in July at the start of a new municipal fiscal year the PNPPs returned in a new form. DSNY did not receive funding to restart the MC training program, so the NYCCP horticultural partners hosted only a skeleton staff. NYBG, QBG, BBG, and SH each hosted a single NYCCP employee to provide support for the CCs in their borough, and recruit as many reopened and new CC sites as possible to list on DSNY’s FSDO map. The structure and operation of DSNY’s FSDO operations also changed.

60 / 97

With the renewed City funding City Council Members reportedly played a more direct role in coordinating collection service with DSNY and sought to prioritize uniform geographic distribution for the reopened FSDOs. DSNY has sought to accomplish this by listing at least one staffed or community operated FSDO in every one of the city’s 59 community districts. DSNY renewed its contract with GrowNYC to host FSDOs but with reduced funding could only support operations at 16 sites, 21% of the total pre-pandemic (see Figure 16, pg 60) (Int. NP1, 2021). GrowNYC and DSNY collectively determined which Greenmarkets would reopen FSDOs, with oversight from City Council. “Which sites do and do not open, there’s oversight from DSNY… they can say yes and no,” (Int. NP1, 2021) .The decision prioritized the most highly utilized FSDOs along with those that would geographically distribute service to more people. An interviewee explained that “choosing where to reopen was not just about the highest tonnage sites, it was about balancing historic participation rates with geographic access, so we opened a few sites in particular that were historically very low tonnage, very low participation, but were very necessary from a geographic access standpoint,” (Int. NP1, 2021). After laying off most of their staff GrowNYC’s Zero Waste team rehired to reach 2 full-time positions, and 22 part-time, down from the pre-pandemic high of 14 full-time and 50 part-time staff, (Int. NP1, 2021). Outside of agency funding to staff these FSDOs DSNY did not renew any of GrowNYC’s zero waste education and outreach functions, nor did it support Greenmarket drop-offs by picking up food scraps from any sites with DSNY trucks and Sanitation Workers, as it previously had. All food scraps collected at GrowNYC’s FSDOs are now delivered to NYCCP’s processing partners, all of whom also had a new relationship with DSNY under this new system.

61 / 97

While NYCCP’s education initiatives were on pause, and GrowNYC Greenmarket drop-offs were in partial operation, the most significant change in any partners’ relationship to DSNY was that of the NYCCP’s processing partners. For the first time, DSNY contracted directly with EM, BR and the LESEC instead of moving the money through an interagency modification with the DCLA. The new direct contract, despite its timing was the result of more than the budget shift. The NYCCP processing partners had been working with DSNY for about two years to secure sole proprietor contracts with the agency, and during the pandemic finally secured all the required approvals from the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the NYC Comptroller’s Office. The Red Hook Community Farm, where BBG NYCCP staff processed compost was not included in the new arrangement because of organizational issues that caused it to temporarily lose its nonprofit status3. Under the new contracts, the NYCCP processing partners’ deliverables were much more concentrated on compost processing than

3 The Red Hook Community Farm previously operated by nonprofit Added Value would join the local nonprofit Red Hook Initiative as a program.

Figure 16: Staffed Food Scrap Drop-Off Openings after Funding Returned in June 2020. Visualization by author

62 / 97

the education and outreach programming they had previously operated, (Int. NP6, 2021). In addition, DSNY now asked these processing partners to operate FSDO locations where they would collect waste to be brought back and processed at their main facilities. The role to operate FSDOs had previously been centralized under GrowNYC’s contract, but under the new tight budgetary circumstances and the lack of brown bin pick-up, the agency asked all its composting partners to step up their collection and processing operations in lieu of their work in education and outreach. DSNY was reportedly open to more creative solutions to serve greater numbers of New Yorkers with access to FSDOs than it had previously been, as evidenced by their willingness to agree to the establishment of unstaffed FSDO locations that would be serviced by the NYCCP processing partners (see Figure 17). In addition, processing partners were tasked with picking up overflow food scrap collections at community gardens

that had listed themselves on DSNY’s public FSDO map. This represented a new type of direct support to CCs, a direct assumption of compost processing capacity. Community gardens that had previously had to shut their gates to public drop-off for lack of capacity could now reopen as public collection sites with weekly pick-ups from NYCCP partners to offload overflow. Under these new PNPP direct contracts, DSNY is

increasingly expanding the ways in which it supports organic waste collection and processing, while it shifts away from education and outreach initiatives.

In relaunching a skeleton FSDO program DSNY was seemingly pulled in multiple

directions. On the one hand they sought to reestablish FSDO service in the locations with the highest participation rates that would result in the highest material diversion. On the other hand, DSNY and City Council sought to ensure somewhat equitable geographic access to FSDO collection sites across the city. To this end, NYCCP partners noted that DSNY was unwilling for its NYCCP staff to assist in the establishment of new CC FSDO location in Community Districts where at least one already existed, in the interest of establishing new

Figure 17: An unstaffed Food Scrap Drop-Off location. Photo by author.

63 / 97

drop-off sites in areas without any service. NYCCP partners described having to tell people, “I'm glad that you guys are organized and that you have the capacity and that you want to do this for your neighbors…but I can't send another truck,” (Int. NP5, 2021). NYCCP sources described this geographic limitation as a challenge to supporting CC operations across NYC. They were also encouraged to establish FSDO partnerships and/or operations in areas without active CCs and without the aid of sufficient material and financial support from the City. “I hate going into communities that I'm not part of and being like, ‘Hey, I need somebody to step up and volunteer their time every week to do this thing that you might not even know about or care about. And I don't have the time or resources to teach you about it,’” (Int. NP5, 2021). Since no area of NYC is adequately served by FSDO locations, NYCCP personnel were frustrated at their lack of freedom to build on operations where there was more groundwork to do so. With weaker networks in some parts of their boroughs and no particular vehicle for education and outreach NYCCPs also found it a challenge to spur the development of new composting sites in geographically underserved areas.

As DSNY’s BRS (formerly BWPRR) and its NYCCP partners worked to build up drop-off compost collection and processing services in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic the rug was seemingly pulled from under them by the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks). In September, 2020, NYC Parks notified BR, the LESEC, and the RHCF that their processing facilities in Long Island City, Queens, the Lower East Side, Manhattan, and Red Hook, Brooklyn respectively would no longer be permitted to operate on its land. NYC Parks moved to evict BR from its Queensbridge site in order to construct the proposed Baby Queensbridge Park and to evict the LESEC from the East River Park in order to facilitate the construction of a major shoreline resiliency project, the East Side Coastal Resiliency Plan (ESCRP). As reason, NYC Parks cited composting as a form of parkland alienation in line with the 2013 Kings County Supreme Court decision that led to the closure of DSNY’s Spring Creek composting facility in East New York Brooklyn, (Matter of Raritan Baykeeper Inc. v City of New

York, 2013). To date, the CCs had coverage to compost on parkland under their MOUs with NYC Parks. Despite no immediate work that would necessitate BBG to remove its compost operations from the RHCF, the site was instructed to stop its work on public parkland in line with the alienation finding. The eviction of these NYCCP partners constitutes an existential threat to these nonprofits’ operations. Given the difficulty of siting compost processing facilities, these nonprofits considered themselves fortunate to have permission to operate on NYC parkland. Despite reported attempts to identify a suitable new location to move its

64 / 97

composting operations, the LESEC had not found an appropriate candidate in its multi-year search. There are seemingly very few alternate options for these community processors. If all three of these sites were evicted it would be a major blow to the existing in-city community compost processing.

In response to this threat, the SOC coalition mobilized once more in defense of the CCs on NYC Parks property. The coalition was successful in generating some initial press around the proposed evictions, enough to trigger the NYC Parks department to hold public hearings on the process. The coalition directed its supporters to attend and submit testimony at a series of community meetings and public hearings on the issue. These protests led to a 6-month lease extension from January 1, 2021, to July 1, 2021. It remains to be seen what will happen then. In moving to take this action, NYC Parks has sustained criticism that it is not collaborating with DSNY towards the realization of the citywide goal to send zero waste to landfills by 2030. Similarly, DSNY has been the target of complaints that the agency is not adequately protecting its nonprofit composting partners or offering adequate resources for them to secure permanent sites. It does not appear at present that DSNY has the bureaucratic power or political sway to change NYC Parks’ decision on the matter.

As if the threat of eviction from parkland were not enough to for the NYCCP to deal with, the NYC Department of City Planning (DCP) is also working with the Trust for Governors Island on a rezoning proposal that may temporarily displace EM’s compost processing facility. The rezoning would allow for office and commercial space development on the small island in the Hudson Bay, and would relocate Earth Matter from its current half-acre site to a new two-acre facility on the island. While EM has a strong relationship with the Island Trust and is not under the same threat of permanent eviction as the other NYCCP partners, their relocation may temporarily affect their processing ability at a time when a significant portion of the city’s community composting capacity is under threat. The rezoning plan is currently in process by the NYC DCP, with the most recent City Council hearing on the matter held on April 5, 2021. The fate of Governors Island and by extension EM’s compost facility will be in the hands of the

51-member City Council when it votes on the rezoning proposal. While the SOC coalition formed, NYC’s micro-haulers also went to work organizing amongst themselves. Feeling that they had been excluded from DSNY business opportunities, operated under an uncertain regulatory environment, and would benefit from municipal policy that could support their fledgling industry, micro-haulers from multiple entities began organizing to form a trade association. “We're trying to create a trade association to be able to

65 / 97

bargain for… contracts with the City and better insurance rates” among other things, (Int. MH2, 2021). Despite the trade association being comprised of both for-profit and nonprofit actors, the members “feel that we approach the work similarly, where our core drivers are to pay our teams to do their work, and to operate responsibly and transparently,” (Int. MH3, 2021). The association formed as more and more New Yorkers saw the demand for composting services, the lack of options to meet it, and the resulting business opportunity. Individuals began contacting the established micro-haulers in the interest of launching their own operations. One micro-hauler source mentioned multiple calls a week from interested individuals calling upon them to “teach me everything,” (Int. MH3, 2021). Much as they may have wanted to help, their already stretched operations did not allow for them to offer much assistance to new entrants to the scene. In addition to advancing the agenda of current micro-haulers, the trade association may work to help others launch businesses and expand the industry. For some, forming the trade association is one step in “proving that decentralized waste infrastructure is effective and can be scaled to a community level, and can provide jobs, and it can reduce the negative impacts of waste infrastructure on communities that are currently overburdened,” (Int. MH3, 2021). The association is still in its early stages of organizing and is currently working through a fiscal sponsorship agreement with the Institute for Local Self Reliance. Composting initiatives in NYC, like most other things, faced significant setbacks in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic that shut the city down and caused major municipal budget cuts. Under the crisis, DSNY entirely cut its composting programs bringing curbside organics collection, and its PNPP education, outreach, composting, and drop-off collection services to a sudden halt. While advocates from the SOC coalition were successful in securing a small portion of the programs’ previous funding to support FSDO and processing operations, NYC’s public support for composting remains a specter of its former magnitude. As of April 22, 2021, the City announced that curbside brown bin collection service will resume in August 2021 in the areas where opt-in and regular service previously existed, however it will now be opt-in across the board, (DSNY, 2021b). For the time being, NYC’s community composters and the

partners of the NYCCP navigate a future in which their access to City funds and even their physical presence remain uncertain. Having elucidated the history of NYC compost initiatives from the 1990s to present, the next section turns to interview findings from the panel of informants assembled to lend their insight and direct experience to this story.

66 / 97

8. Insights from the Ground: Interview Findings In the course of informant interviews, the research revealed the high points and pitfalls of

DSNY’s compost related PNPP models, offering a fuller picture than City data and reports offer alone. In particular, NYCCP personnel and other members of NYC’s composting community elevated the important social and community aspects of the program’s work in bringing together neighbors, growing support and capacity for organics recycling across the city, investing in educating and training generations of urban composters, and directly involving New Yorkers in the process of transforming food scraps into a rich fertilizer. The benefits celebrated by interviewees did not typically align with the measures under which DSNY and NYC government more broadly measure the success of its composting programs, namely, in the number of pounds and diversion rate of organic waste from the refuse stream, and the geographic coverage of FSDO locations. The insights compiled in this section represent an insider’s view of NYC’s compost landscape, its strengths, and its weaknesses.

On a base level, no source interviewed believed that NYC is doing an adequate job collecting and processing organic waste. With the majority of New Yorker’s food scraps still going to the refuse stream, interviewees felt that there is still a long way to go. This is true of the current situation under COVID-19 where only FSDO sites are available, as well as under the municipal brown bin pick-up program. During the municipal collection pilot, sources cited the fact that not every neighborhood was covered, that the pilot did not adequately serve denser multi-family residential developments, that participation was voluntary instead of mandatory, that the diversion rate was well below its potential, that the feedstock picked up in brown bins has relatively high contamination of non-organic matter, and that there is little clarity about where the organic waste is brought and how it is processed after leaving the city. Sources in

the NYCCP saw DSNY’s door-to-door curbside collection efforts as “super inefficient, expensive, and not effective” due to its low diversion rates, lack of coverage and logistic obstacles, (Int. NP2, 2021). Speaking on contamination and DSNY’s policy to allow plastic liner bags in brown bins, one interviewee said “there’s this massive contamination problem, and microplastic problem that I’m extremely concerned about” (Int. NP8, 2021). When it came to the final recycling destination for the City’s curbside collection, one source decried that “nobody can tell you, at DSNY, where that brown bin stuff actually goes,” which they contrasted to FSDO sites, and “the transparency that local composting offers,” (Int. NP2, 2021). Multiple sources cited a lack of political will and financial investment in the operation

67 / 97

and growth of NYC’s municipal composting services and the Sanitation Department’s PNPPs. According to one source, The future of composting in NYC “completely depends on political will,” (Int. NP1, 2021). Despite citing challenges to curbside collection efforts, community composters generally did not believe that it would be possible to compost all of NYC’s organic waste without municipally operated collection and processing. In other words, Community Composting efforts alone do not have the capacity to serve the city’s entire residential composting demand, nor did interviewees believe that these efforts could be expanded to the extent required to meet that demand.

8.1 Who Composts: Service Equity No source interviewed felt that access to organic waste collection services in NYC is equal

across geographies and demographics. Regarding the curbside collection program, sources felt that its launch in single-family home districts set the program out to initially serve wealthier New Yorkers who can afford to own their own home. “When they started rolling out the brown bin program, they did it in a way that was financially sound or feasible, but also privileged people with their own house, ‘cause they started in single-family home neighborhoods,” (Int. NP5, 2021). Sources also mentioned curbside’s lack of service to large multi-family apartment buildings as a limiting factor in reaching a more socially and economically diverse set of New Yorkers. “What the compost project will tell you, is that because it was not mandatory, the building owners did not want the brown bins in poorer communities,” (Int. MH2, 2021). Sources felt that failing to require composting of multi-unit building owners and managers stopped it from reaching some more vulnerable NYC communities. In contrast, interviewees had a more positive perception of the NYCCP and GrowNYC’s efforts to reach diverse groups of New Yorkers through DSNY’s PNPPs. This rang truer for the PNPP’s education initiatives and technical support than for its FSDO initiatives. FSDOs, by centralizing waste collection on a neighborhood scale offer a more efficient collection method from a staff and financial point of view, however, the fact that they require people to proactively deliver their waste limits the number of people who they serve to a dedicated few. FSDO site operators said regarding access, that “the only barriers to participating are physical and temporal, our schedule and our locations,” (Int. NP1, 2021). They felt that service was offered to and available for all New Yorkers within range but felt that coverage was significantly lacking. The geographic distribution of FSDO locations, particularly those that are permanently located and volunteer-

68 / 97

operated is dependent on each neighborhood’s built environment. “[There are] three community districts that have very few community gardens in them, because

the land is used differently than in other parts of the Bronx, and they also have very few greening groups in them because of the density, and the lack of parkland,” (Int. NP7, 2021).

Neighborhood density may not uniformly affect how accessible FSDO sites are to people of different incomes. On one hand, the poorest New Yorkers are less likely to live in single-family homes, on the other some of NYC’s highest density areas where there is little room for community composting are also some of its wealthiest neighborhoods. In the Bronx, where a history of low property value led to building abandonment and arson, some lower income neighborhoods have a greater proliferation of community gardens, “in the Bronx, we had a very strong network of community gardens because they were in the parts of the neighborhood where land had more value if the building was abandoned,” (Int. NP7, 2021). In line with the geographic analysis in the chapter six, this may have led community garden-based CCs to better serve non-White and poorer neighborhoods. When staffed FSDO sites were introduced to fill gaps in coverage, more went to affluent, gentrifying, or predominantly White areas where denser environments precluded the operation of permanent community composting sites. Geographic accessibility to FSDO sites is just one factor that may affect access for New Yorkers of color and poor communities.

Alongside geographic access, sources mentioned how NYC’s diverse culinary traditions may also be a factor in the access and utility of FSDO sites. The rules for what can be deposited at an FSDO location may be one variable that lowers accessibility.

“At drop-off locations. You cannot bring meat, dairy bones, you can't bring any of those things,

but people still eat it…It excludes a large demographic of people to say that we won't take this type of organic waste and it becomes a privilege thing to separate your food scraps, which is

the issue.” (Int. MH2, 2021)

By not serving every type of diet, particularly ethnic cuisines, the source worried that drop-off sites perpetuated an image of composting for White or affluent communities, and that “they may uphold those same institutions of thought…inadvertently just through those practices and not encouraging [people to compost],” (ibid.). Another source posited that NYC’s diversity of culinary traditions leads some households to waste less food at the source, “the demographics that we help, you don't waste food. If you're an ethnic cook …we do deal with a population that is trying not to waste food, and also have limited free time,” (Int. NP7, 2021). For either of these two reasons, NYC’s composting programs may be less helpful or less utilized across

69 / 97

households of varying ethnic compositions. Another factor that may affect socially equitable access to PNPP education and FSDO

services is the racial and ethnic makeup of the program’s staff, volunteers, and existing users. Sources shared the sentiment that even if FSDO sites are technically open to anyone, they may not feel welcoming to every racial and ethnic group if those people do not see themselves represented at the sites. “Are we in their communities?” Questioned one former NYCCP staffer who felt the NYCCP fell short of reaching and representing non-White New Yorkers (Int. CC1, 2021). Disappointed in the lack of FSDOs serving public housing communities, they continued to say, “I’m not going to walk outside my community to a site that looks like it only welcomes White people,” (Int. CC1, 2021). While this particular critique was centered on the NYCCP’s paid personnel, sources also cited a lack of diversity among NYCCP volunteers and drop-off users.

“If somebody walks past the site, and they see a bunch of White people, and they’re Black or

they’re Spanish, it’s not intimidating, but it’s uncomfortable…if you see diversity it makes you feel more welcome, it makes you more inclined to walk in, and I feel like that’s part of access,”

(Int. CC1, 2021).

Sources felt that the existing homogeneity is attributable to NYCCP hiring practices that failed to reflect NYC’s diversity, and a lower penetration of NYCCP education initiatives in

low-income and non-White communities. Given the NYCCP education initiatives’ direct influence in training its future staff and

supporting the establishment of community composting sites, some sources felt that an apparent lack of diversity in PNPP programs was the effect of failing to reach all communities with compost education and training. This was particularly true of the Master Composter course which sources felt was the most significant investment of resources in education and training. Sources noted barriers to participation in the physical distance to class locations at the botanical gardens, the private and paternal nature of the city’s elite horticultural institutions, and the significant time investment required for MC certification. “It's not expensive, but it does take a lot of time. And there's a certain amount of privilege in being able to give that time,” (Int. NP5, 2021). Speaking about the host locations for the MC class, “the New York City Compost Project is facilitated through the botanical gardens in the boroughs, and if we're clear about the botanical gardens, they're a space that is private…it was a very private space that…excludes people who don't have the resources and means to even enter the gates,” (Int. MH2, 2021). This narrative of exclusion was echoed by sources who felt that NYCCP still has not reached

70 / 97

some poor and non-White communities, “They created the Compost Project to educate [New Yorkers] on [composting] and I feel like the Compost Project in certain areas, they’ve done that really well, but you can really see where they fell short: NYCHA, the Black and brown communities, Spanish communities,” (Int. CC1, 2021). Most sources held that the neighborhoods reached with education initiatives directly influenced an increase in community composting activity and a demand for composting services. Feeling that the FSDOs tended to serve areas where there was demand, one source suggested that “they’re gunna gravitate towards those areas like, you know, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Williamsburg… areas where they feel like it’s gunna work ‘cause there’s already a culture there,” (Int. CC1, 2021). The source felt that this was at the expense of investing in education in areas where compost was not in demand, “I feel like the Compost Project should be teaching that culture, not just

keeping that culture going, we should be teaching that to areas that don’t know anything about this,” (Int. CC1, 2021). When certain FSDOs have not attracted enough users or collected sufficient tonnage in the past, DSNY has worked with its nonprofit partners to close locations that were resource intensive given their returns. “Everybody at the Department of Sanitation, is scratching their head, like ‘how come these people don't participate the same way?’ And it's because they never got the education. Cause they were always… kept out of the loop,” (Int. NP5, 2021). Through this process, unequal access to education may create a negative loop that perpetuates communities’ lack of access to compost services, therefore precluding an interest in compost education from developing. Through the barriers to participate, the decision to launch programs in relatively affluent areas, and a lack of resources to expand its services to poorer and non-White communities, the NYCCP’s education programs may have built community composting capacity unevenly across NYC’s diverse landscape.

Interviewees did not believe that shortcomings in social equity were intentionally exclusionary or malicious, but rather felt that a lack of consistent financial and political investment in DSNY’s PNPPs has resulted in programs that lack the resources to reach areas that may require additional or new investment. Some sources felt that there are intentional efforts within the NYCCP to overcome this, “they're very strategic about how… they get around the entire Bronx. So, I don't think… that communities of color are not focused on with the Compost Project. I wouldn't say that at all… If anything, they try to put more resources there,” (Int. MH2, 2021). Despite efforts within the PNPPs to expand their reach to more diverse communities, the project’s initial choice to work with botanical gardens and leverage their network of existing community gardeners, “doubled-down” on neighborhoods where

71 / 97

there was groundwork to perform this work and may have left others without the necessary investment to “catch up” with the composting services and demand exhibited in certain parts of the city.

It should be noted that even if community composting is in demand in some areas, that may not be universal across the entire city. When multiple options exist to compost household organic waste, from community composting to municipal pick-up, it may be more important to prioritize serving every resident with pick-up than it is to extend community composting education and activities to every neighborhood. This is particularly relevant when we consider the nature of the services being offered. While some New Yorkers may wish to be directly involved in composting their waste and want to ensure that it is processed locally for environmental reasons, others may be better served by municipal pick-up which does not require the legwork or time investment that community composting does. This fact led many sources to suggest that curbside pick-up will offer the greatest promise for equitable service delivery if its geographic and density limitations are overcome. Parsing the distinction between the benefits of community composting and curbside pick-up requires closer examination. The next section will explore sources’ responses to that question: What are the benefits of Community Composting as promoted by the City’s PNPPs and what are its shortcomings?

8.2 True Value: Strengths and Weaknesses of PNPP Programs In the 28-year history of the PNPP’s community composting initiatives, DSNY has shifted from a focus on community, to their current focus on composting. This transition was born of the necessity to serve NYC’s organic recycling needs in a time of crisis when municipal services were cut, however it prevents DSNY from capitalizing on some benefits that sources believed were a core component of practicing community composting. Rather than emphasizing the amount of compost collected and processed, every source believed that the real value of the PNPPs lies in their effects on people. Those effects manifest in the “hearts and minds” that community composting changes that have expanded the ranks of dedicated composters and the demand for composting services, the development of community among neighbors and composters across NYC more broadly, the empowerment and agency gained through local stewardship and self-determination, the local employment opportunities created through its networks, the transparency of its sustainable closed-loop local processing, the high quality of the compost produced, and the legitimacy that inclusion in its programs offers to

72 / 97

participating organizations. These somewhat ineffable benefits are not easily captured in tons and diversion rates, nor has DSNY always centered these benefits in the programs’ implementation. For all these benefits, the PNPPs also suffer from administrative challenges that hinder the programs’ ability to work towards these indirect but beneficial outcomes, and which have conversely worked to gatekeep composting organizations that aren’t involved in the PNPPs from accessing City business and support. Since their launch in the 90s, the PNPPs have been successful in driving “deep” education and engagement among a highly dedicated group of urban composters. Many of these individuals work to advance composting in NYC and have individually volunteered hundreds of hours towards that goal. These individuals are most clearly represented in the ranks of certified MCs who work as community organizers, and social, business and policy entrepreneurs in this space. Collectively, these Community Composters have established and expanded the majority of NYC’s non-municipal compost collection and processing capacity. In addition, they have been the most vocal advocates for the establishment of municipal curbside organics collection. “We don’t have to dance around… the desire for curbside only exists because of the NYC Compost Project,” (Int. NP7, 2021). Similarly, it was this community of CCs who joined in collective political action to demand that NYC’s compost programs be saved from citywide budget cuts under COVID-19. This informal citywide community includes nearly every composting organization in NYC and has facilitated very close connections between organizations that work inside and outside of the NYCCP. “Many people that work for the Compost Project feel a kind of comradery,” (Int. NP2, 2021). In addition to the community of composters themselves, multiple sources mentioned the community that arises even at FSDO sites. “I really love FSDOs because it’s such a dynamic community gathering space,” (Int. NP1, 2021). The amount of volunteerism that this tight-knit community has fostered is fairly remarkable and studying its ability to do so could be the focus of future research. In addition, the deep education and training that NYCCP offers has developed an entirely new track of green jobs within NYC that did not previously exist. At its peak, DSNY’s

PNPPs directly funded 45 full-time positions and 52-part time positions, (Community Composting Coalition, 2020). Although the majority of the work available through DSNY’s PNPPs is part-time, many of the NYCCP’s employees remain highly dedicated to careers in compost. This is evident in the number of NYCCP employees who returned to their roles after COVID-19 related layoffs. Even some of those who were not rehired endeavored to launch their own composting businesses and remain in the industry through other means. This points to the

73 / 97

local jobs created by the PNPPs as another feature in its success, however, questions about the quality and consistency of those employment offerings erode this benefit. More attention will be given to the discussion of composting labor and employment in the following chapter. Adding to its benefits, the NYCCP promotes local processing efforts which have the effect of directly exposing New Yorkers to the practice of composting and eliminating some of the transportation emissions associated with trucking organic waste to other regional processing facilities. Most CCs attributed the success of the PNPP education programs to the intrinsic link they acknowledge between the practice of composting and the power of witnessing its results. There is something incredible about seeing food scraps, usually considered waste, transform into a rich soil amendment in a relatively short time through a manual process. The process shows recycling in action, and as founder of Added Value, David Buckle described, composting is the “gateway drug” for recycling and environmentalism, (Int. CC1, 2021).

“The processing and the education are intertwined, you cannot separate them…you cannot

separate them and suggest that you can put a little table with a little worm bin and suggest that’s how everyone is going to care about source separating thousands of pounds of organics

in their home.” (Int. NP2, 2021)

CCs who have facilitated the practice of composting and engaged hundreds of New Yorkers in

the process first-hand describe the powerful impact that processing compost has in inspiring people to recycle their organic waste. This experience is completely absent from DSNY’s brown bin collection, which, like trash, is picked up from homes and taken out of the city, out of sight, out of mind. CCs emphasize that “Local processing should be “something that is viewed as a vehicle for change, a catalyst for people to say that they’re part of that,” and that they are personally invested in the process, (Int. NP2, 2021). Local processing efforts, in addition to reducing fuel use, ensure that the beneficial product of composting, its rich fertilizer, is used to improve the health of city soil. This benefit may be most acutely felt by NYC’s gardeners and urban farmers who are faced with local soils contaminated by pollutants and heavy metals that make eating locally grown produce a potential hazard to human health. Finally, some institutional benefits accrued to the organizations directly involved in DSNY’s PNPPs. The NYCCP partners are often seen as the go-to resource for composting in NYC which has enabled them to centralize the related expertise and knowledge. In praise of the NYCCP’s work to connect its partners, one source mentioned the benefit of knowledge sharing, “the people working operations can get together and ‘talk shop’,” (Int. NP2, 2021). In

74 / 97

addition, for the small nonprofits in the NYCCP (LESEC, EM and BR), the compost project provides a level of legitimacy that they otherwise may not have achieved. One source described their partnership in the NYCCP as providing “validity,” and said that “if we didn’t have that kind of a relationship with a city government agency, it would be harder for us to get other kinds of funding, because we use it as leverage… it gives us cred,” (Int. NP2, 2021). While this is a benefit to the partners, it may work as a barrier to other organizations in the space. Alongside the benefits of the PNPPs presented here, the partnerships also faced challenges and shortfalls. Among the pitfalls of the PNPPs are their lack of dedicated and predictable financial resources, their role as “gatekeepers” among NYC’s composters, their inflexibility and inability to partner with more varied entities, their weakness to resist shifting political tides, their inability to address certain larger needs like land and processing capacity, and their emphasis on volunteer labor over the growth of paid career pathways. Affecting all of these are the PNPP’s unstable political footing. The NYCCP has had its entire funding eliminated two times since its inception. First, after the September 11th terrorist attack, and second, at the start of the current COVID-19 pandemic. With their nearly three-decade program seemingly on a perpetual chopping block, the partners of the NYCCP suffer from no guarantee that their operations will continue to be supported by the City. While this may not be of much consequence to the larger botanical partners in the NYCCP, the elimination of City funding is a much more existential threat to the small processing organizations of the partnership. “It was kind of like a roller coaster with the Compost Project” (Int. CC1, 2021). Shaky and insufficient City funding also hinders the PNPP’s ability to meet its goals, even those handed down by the City’s political leadership like reaching every community board with FSDOs. This weakness to shifting political and budgetary priorities has also affected the long shift in NYCCP operations from their initial focus on technical support and education to their current focus on drop-off collection and processing, which some sources do not believe leverages community composting’s inherent strengths.

Another pitfall in the PNPPs is their inability to easily alter who they work with as NYC’s composting landscape evolves, largely due to its own efforts. As more MCs were trained, a more complex composting landscape has emerged that includes informal organizations, other nonprofits, social enterprises and small for-profit firms and sole proprietors. Under these circumstances, DSNY has not expanded the partners who it works with, privileging incorporated nonprofits. While its earliest botanical garden partners were large well-established

75 / 97

institutions, its latter processing partners share more resemblance to the new entrants in the industry. Given that DSNY reached out to any active organizations when it expanded the partnership for processing (Int. DS2, 2021), the inclusion of the existing partners over newcomers may be an artifact of them being in the right place at the right time. Regardless of the reason, entities operating outside the PNPPs are concerned that the partnerships “monopolize” composting legitimacy in NYC and serve as the gateway to official recognition and City partnership. This complaint was particularly evident among micro-haulers who find that DSNY does not offer business or partnerships to composting organizations that are not nonprofits. “The bureaucracy of how they show up… it becomes difficult for other people to come into a space that they dominate, to come into a space that they almost have a … I'm going to say a monopoly over,” (Int. MH2, 2021). Another micro-hauler interviewed mentioned running up against “bureaucracy and red tape” when confronting the NYCCP’s agenda, (Int. MH1, 2021). That source felt that the NYCCP’s leadership in a City agency hindered the project’s leeway to act in creative and innovative ways. Small organizations working from the outside critique the PNPPs for failing to serve all New Yorkers equitably and felt that they had to operate separately to maintain their own social justice goals. “It shouldn't only be through this one way, this one lens, because it doesn't reach all people, and that has been my problem, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m also doing my own thing,” (Int. MH2, 2021). In order to conjure the legitimacy bestowed by City partnership through other means, several micro-haulers are banding together to form a trade association. Part of the impetus for establishing the association is “because our industry needs legitimacy” and wants the option to compete for City business, contracts, incentives and funding, (Int. MH3, 2021). Although the PNPP’s creative agreement structure can be celebrated as an act of bureaucratic innovation, limits in the City’s procurement regulations hurt its ability to work with new partners in new ways. This is true of the interagency modification which enabled the NYCCP to launch with partners already doing business with the City, its reliance on GrowNYC (a heavily City-affiliated nonprofit), and the City’s arduous regulatory requirements to enter sole

source contracts. “[The NYCCP] is a combo project… hosted within the City and within nonprofit organizations, so it’s kind of like a cloud organization that doesn’t really exist in one or the other space… one of

the challenges that I have with the Compost Project and with the structure of it, is that it hasn’t evolved with the evolution of interest in and participation in organics recycling in the city.” (Int.

MH3, 2021)

76 / 97

Sources recognize that the City wants to maintain a close hold over waste management activities and procurement, particularly given the industry’s notorious association with organized crime in NYC, however some believe it becomes an equity issue when the City cannot offer resources or business to small minority and women-owned firms and informal organizations. “We’re not really allowed to work with the City or the Compost Project because we’re not a nonprofit organization,” (Int. MH3, 2021). Even when avenues exist to improve an organization’s potential to work with the City, like registration as a minority or woman owned business (MWBE), burdensome paperwork and rigid specifications may make them inaccessible to entities with little capacity. “The strict nonprofit, for-profit line might be an outdated one…there isn’t a perfect definition for a social enterprise right now… we’re not a B corp. because it takes too long to become a B corp.,” (Int. MH3, 2021). In these ways, the PNPPs have served to gatekeep composting legitimacy in NYC, and the challenges to administering partnerships as a City agency have stifled DSNY’s options to change its partnerships as circumstances evolved. On top of the challenges already stated, the PNPPs face political obstacles that have prevented DSNY from addressing one of the initiatives’ clear needs, processing capacity. No matter who was asked, every source agreed that the state of local compost processing is in dire straits. Even before pandemic related budget cuts, the space available for composting set a limit on how much organic waste could be processed locally. Under the elimination of curbside pick-up, with drop-offs serving as most New Yorkers’ only option, that capacity has been stretched beyond its limit. In a dense city like New York, where land prices are at a premium it is inordinately difficult to identify and procure the land required to run mid-scale local composting operations. These are sites like the LESEC, EM, and BR, which offer greater capacity than small-scale community gardens, but which still benefit from volunteer labor and operate as CCs. Finding appropriate land is “our biggest struggle,” whether that land is “considered either public land, shared land or underutilized land,” (Int. NP2, 2021). Without that land the City will pay to truck more waste to regional processing facilities and fewer New

Yorkers will access community composting, hamstringing education and engagement across the city’s compost initiatives. In addition, many micro-haulers rely on CC sites to process their collections, so local capacity is a limiting factor in the number of customers that they are able to take on (Int. MH1, 2021), and the overall growth of the industry. This challenge took on immediate urgency during the pandemic, when nearly all of the mid-scale processors in NYC were threatened with eviction or relocation. Three organizations, LESEC, BR and the RHCF

77 / 97

operate under MOUs on NYC Parks land, but were informed in September 2020, that the Department would no longer host household food scrap composing. “Parks does not want residential food scraps being processed on this site, they said it’s not a legal use,” (Int. CC1, 2021). Notification came as a total surprise to the organizations and left them with few options other than putting up a fight. The LESEC has tried unsuccessfully to find another operating location in their area for three years to no success (Int. NP2, 2021). The apparent lack of interagency coordination between DSNY and the Parks Department surprised and disappointed some CCs and has made it evident that even when working towards a citywide strategic goal like 0x30, DSNY is operating without cooperation from its counterparts. Given the situation, the dedicated network of CCs sprang into action to organize in opposition to the evictions, and the political fight is ongoing. Without DSNY publicly coming to their defense, some NYCCP partners feel abandoned in their partnership. The situation reveals the limited power of a single bureau to affect its larger agency and City government. Some sources saw the lack of processing capacity as the result of advocate’s intense focus on service access without complementary understanding of or advocacy for increasing local processing. “There’s a hyper-focus on access that’s not sufficiently backed up by infrastructure,” (Int. NP1, 2021). When so much focus on the City’s composting programs centers on who it serves or does not serve, little public attention is directed towards the infrastructure that makes locally processed FSDO possible. “When the political pressure exists, applied toward composting, it’s all about access, everyone wants to be able to compost, I would argue it’s DSNY’s job to figure out the backend that makes that possible,” (Int. NP1, 2021). Sources questions DSNY’s priorities, citing the $400+ million spent on waste export annually, “instead of that same money that's being spent to export the waste. Why are we not taking a portion of that money and building out the infrastructure to do it and pay the people to do it,” (Int. MH2, 2021). One processor lamented the political attraction to alternative organic recycling options like power generation through anaerobic digestion, suggesting that “energy is sexier than good dirt,” (Int. NP2, 2021). The current processing crisis highlights the limits of a

PNPP, wherein the nonprofit partners feel unsupported by the City, and its municipal administrators cannot overcome agency politics. The interviews conducted for this study shed light on the intricacies, values, challenges, and politics of the Sanitation Department’s PNPPs. The sources have traced the path of the NYCCP from its inception in 1993 as an education and capacity building program for community composters, to its shift in 2011 to offer organics recycling directly to the public

78 / 97

through FSDO and the expansion of local processing capacity. In its latest form, it remains New Yorkers’ sole public organics recycling option, and has shed nearly all its community building, education, and training benefits, in favor of collecting and processing whatever waste it can with its reduced resources. “When funding did return we were able to rehire just two of the positions, so we’re down a couple staff people, and the focus of the workplan is pretty strictly around processing material, there isn’t really anything available (hours) to be dedicated to education,” (Int. NP2, 2021). Given the benefits to community development, education, engagement, and employment achievable through community composting, and the City’s current reliance on CCs to divert and process waste, it seems fitting to end with the WHYS of composting, as recited by NYCCP Program Manager Jodie Colon:

“the WHYS of composting: …we're stuck on the

W waste management; but the

H is healthy plants make healthy people, makes a healthy planet; the

Y is for yard and garden care; and the

S is for all the social, psychological, and spiritual benefits of composting together as a

community.”

9. Discussion Recounting the history of NYC compost initiatives gave us a full picture of the education, support, collection, and processing services that the City offers through its PNPPs and its municipal programs, as well as other actors operating in the space. Detailing the partnership’s creation and evolution over the years made clear how the NYCCP and GrowNYC partnerships have shifted to meet the city’s organic recycling needs multiple times, and exposed the challenges involved in doing so. The previous section drew upon a set of 15 interviews with current and former personnel from NYCCP partners, GrowNYC, DSNY, micro-haulers and community composters to generate a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which these many actors intersect. In doing so, we focused on the PNPP’s implications on social equity, and the values and challenges of promoting community composting as a public-nonprofit collaboration. In the following chapter, this thesis will engage in a broader discussion around the programs’ intersections with social equity and environmental justice, labor and employment, and program measurement. The lens of equity informs all three sections to follow

79 / 97

and urges us to consider how the benefits of community composting that reach beyond waste management may inform the future of DSNY’s PNPPs and composting programs.

9.1 Social Equity and Environmental Justice When people think about banana peels, eggshells, coffee grounds and pits, few would immediately connect them with justice or equity. What does organic recycling have to do with equality, or justice for that matter? If we’re to believe some of NYC’s community composters, organic waste and justice are inextricably linked. The grounds for this connection materialize in the movement for Environmental Justice (EJ), which critically examines the environmental inequities and burdens that marginalized peoples in the United States and across the world have been subject to. In prototypical EJ issues, private industry or government has unequally and without their consent subjected non-White (primarily Black) communities to environmental burdens like ground, water, and air pollution, highway construction, illegal dumping, and the like. It has generally centered around fights against unwanted detriments to public health and nature. In this way, waste management fits squarely within the contexts of EJ, as communities of color have endured far more than their fair share of industrial waste transfer, processing, and recycling facilities, (Melosi, 2006). This is certainly the case in New York City. However, more

recent works on EJ have extended its framework that centers the human toll of environmental degradation to examine the human benefits of environmentally sustainable systems, infrastructure, and initiatives. They suggest that we have a moral obligation to prioritize these benefits in the marginalized communities that have suffered environmental injustices for so long. Here, enters compost. The diversion of organic waste from landfills is a societal opportunity to recover materials in a way that improves local soils, creates career pathways, and eliminates our former polluting waste management practices. Ensuring that Black, brown, poor, and other marginalized peoples lead the work of composting and reap its benefits is a corrective act of environmental justice. Through this lens, some actors in NYC’s organics recycling landscape draw a direct link between community composting and environmental justice. However, in composting’s 30-year evolution in NYC DSNY has not centered EJ in its work. Although the PNPP’s administrators may share this goal, the larger agency of which they are a part, DSNY, has not actively centered social outcomes in its waste management work. For the most part, DSNY brass and

80 / 97

its rank-and-file union workforce focus on the technical challenge of their work instead of its social justice implications. It is no minor endeavor to get three million tons of waste off people’s stoops and out of NYC every year, however, if the agency and the City do not change their stance, a major opportunity to ameliorate past and ongoing injustice will be lost. The issue is on City Council members’ agendas. In 2018 Council Member Antonio Reynoso, representing parts of Brooklyn, sponsored Intro-157, a bill to reduce the burdensome amount of waste transfer and processing that happens in low-income and Black and brown communities in NYC (Stremple, 2018). In addition, the “Community Organics and Recycling Empowerment” (CORE) act (Intro 1942, 2020), which is currently in committee would go beyond oversight to mandate that DSNY operate at least three FSDOs in every one of the city’s 59 community districts (NYC Council, 2020). For a few of the sources interviewed in this study, EJ is a guiding principle. However, unlike these dedicated community composters, not every minority New Yorker feels the same way about compost. One community composter who is working to develop compost processing sites that are operated by and for people in underserved areas, sometimes runs into that skepticism. In describing a conversation with a public housing resident, the person was taken aback at the idea of processing waste at their development. “’Oh you’re bringing rats?’ They really don’t know the benefit of composting, they don’t know that we’re actually reducing rats in their buildings,” (Int. CC1, 2021). That informant said they probably would have felt the same way if not for their exposure to composting through the NYCCP and green job training programs. After four years working at an NYCCP partner, they were laid off under COVID-19, and moved to launch their new organization. Their first few projects have been to improve composting facilities at public housing developments with nonprofit Green City Force (GCF), which is among few organizations that offer composting services to NYCHA residents in their communities. While GCF works with NYCCP partners, the organization elects to stay off DSNY’s map of public FSDO sites because it wants to serve NYCHA residents in particular. Another source felt that their affiliation with the government sometimes affects people’s

willingness to offer their trust, some low income people “look at government agencies with more skepticism and that does present its challenge,” (Int. NP4, 2021). They continued to say that in this circumstance their direct association with nonprofit partners can sometimes help override that hesitancy to work with government officials, (ibid.). These examples are illustrative of the trouble that DSNY’s PNPPs have in reaching new communities. Although the CCs interviewed all see a local community composting facility as an

81 / 97

amenity, that view isn’t universally shared. “I have yet to see in New York City a fight against a community composting site location, but I think we’re going to see it in the next few years ‘cause we need more of them,” (Int. NP1, 2021). If the city’s community composting capacity is to expand, its reception (or lack of it) in marginalized communities will make evident the extents to which the PNPP’s education, outreach and engagement work has reached areas that are not White and affluent. There is, after all, a difference between collection and processing. “A City Council Member generally, they don’t want to brag about a compost facility being in their district, they want to brag about their constituents being able to compost,” (Int. NP1, 2021). Despite this distinction, as discussed previously, the two depend on each other, and if DSNY’s PNPPs are to have similar education and engagement success in more communities across NYC it will likely be because they’re able to directly involve residents in the process, as they have at their existing CC sites. However, as long having “a compost facility in your district doesn’t necessarily mean access for all your residents to composting,” it will continue to be a political challenge to expand processing capacity (Int. NP1, 2021). Along with the social implications at the intersection of EJ and composting in NYC, are questions about land use. As discussed in the previous two chapters, community composting in a dense city like NYC always comes back to land use. If CCs are to expand their processing efforts in NYC beyond incremental steps, it will likely have to be on vacant or public land. With land and housing at a premium, there is very little of this resource accessible in NYC. This is exacerbated by NYS DEC regulations that prohibit locating large composting facilities near residences or businesses. Although DEC has worked with CCs to create regulations that exempt most small-scale compost processing sites, most of the land suitable for larger facilities is located in poorer Black and brown communities. If the NYCCP moves to expand composting in these areas it has an opportunity to create local jobs, amend local soils, and build community among neighbors as it has around the facilities of its existing processing partners, however it may also face challenges from local residents who do not want another waste management facility in their community, and see it was a nuisance instead of an

amenity. It remains to be seen whether community composting will sufficiently differentiate itself from the unwanted industrial processes of waste management. The dilemma makes clear that composting in NYC is more than the technical endeavor that the Sanitation Department may see it as; it is a social, ethical, and environmental question.

82 / 97

9.3 Labor and Employment As this thesis has demonstrated, composting can be more than a technical exercise or a ratio of carbon to nitrogen materials, it can be a social endeavor. In addition to its environmental and public health benefits, composting organic waste has the potential to create a lot of local career pathways. This is particularly true given the methods used by CCs which sometimes emphasize labor intensive activities like manually decontaminating organic collections, and hand-processing to avoid the use of fuel-burning equipment and its emissions. Numerous jobs exist in community composting for collection, sorting, processing, and transportation that are all accessible to workers without college and advanced degrees, with a relatively minimal amount of training. These are the type of accessible green jobs that have the potential to create local economic development opportunities, particularly in high unemployment areas of the city. Despite the employment potential of organics collection and processing in NYC, DSNY does not appear to consider job creation a goal of its compost programs. DSNY’s stance to date has appeared to minimize the amount of paid labor involved in the community composting system. This is done through a heavy reliance on volunteer labor and by transferring FSDO operations from full-time NYCCP partner staff positions to part-time positions consolidated under GrowNYC. While these actions were taken to stretch an insufficient budget as far as possible, they hurt efforts to create quality jobs and career pathways within NYC’s composting industry. To illustrate, one source mentioned that despite DSNY’s understanding that their processing facility sought to replace fuel usage through manual labor, the agency encouraged the site to improve cost-efficiency by operating with machinery, (Int. NP3, 2021). The shift to more automated processes reduced staff and therefore funding needs, but also made the site less safe and accessible to volunteers, hindering its function as an educational demonstration site. Multiple sources felt that DSNY’s PNPPs had served New Yorkers short on the employment opportunities possible within community composting. “The expectation that labor is all volunteer is broken and outdated,” (Int. MH3, 2021). While informants understood the essential nature of engaging volunteers at community compost sites to further their outreach and education mission, they felt that reliance on volunteerism had gone too far, and that the agency was not properly valuing people’s work. “This is labor that needs to be paid for, it's a green job. Right? … We can't send the message that this work is supposed to be volunteer work… it's crazy,” (Int. MH2,

83 / 97

2021). Even now, with many volunteer managed NYCCP affiliate sites operating at a much higher capacity, little financial support makes it to the people who give their time. While one source mentioned a small stipend paid to volunteer FSDO operators, it appears to be inconsistent, with another reiterating that “there is not any money that supports the [volunteer] labor at these drop-off sites,” (Int. MH2, 2021). In addition to whether people are paid to compost NYC’s organic waste, is the question of who gets paid. One source felt that the NYCCP’s lack of staff diversity is a barrier to engaging more New Yorkers of color. In order to reach marginalized populations they felt that NYCCP “need[s] to diversify the staff, that’s the number one thing,” (Int. CC1, 2021). They felt that the NYCCP’s hiring practices had not been accommodating to people who rely on steady, full-time work, which in turn is a factor in the staff’s lack of diversity. This was felt acutely when DSNY transferred staffed FSDO’s to the part-time staff at GrowNYC in 2019. The NYCCP “outsourced full-time jobs for part-time jobs, which kind of kicked us in the butt, because, you know where I

come from, somebody like me who needs to pay bills, who has kids, were not going to sign up for a job that’s part-time,” (Int. CC1, 2021). Going further, they felt that opaque hiring decisions

when funding was restored in 2020 led to an exodus of employees of color from the NYCCP’s

staff. “We had more Black and brown people running these compost sites before COVID, and

now, they kind of reverted back to their more homogenous style, more just White people, you know, Black and brown people didn’t get their jobs back,” (Int. CC1, 2021). While decisions to cut staff are often done in the face of financial efficiency, those decisions must also be weighed against their effect on staff diversity, equitable program reach, and facilitating equitable employment opportunities in the field. In line with City priorities stated in the strategic plan OneNYC 2050, DSNY has the opportunity to grow a fledgling sector of green jobs, and in doing so employ marginalized New Yorkers in their communities to do work that serves their neighbors. The groundwork for doing

so was already in place with the MC program, which despite not being advertised as a form of workforce development, nonetheless serves as that for NYC’s community composting industry. In addition, DSNY misses an opportunity to support the growth of private jobs in this sector when it does not invite other operators in the space, like micro-haulers, to collaborate. However, until DSNY considers workforce development and career creation as an additional goal and a measurable benefit of its composting initiatives, the city will not reap the full benefit that its employment potential offers. As one informant put it, “I see environmental justice communities being able to benefit off of the new green jobs after having been polluted and

84 / 97

poisoned for so long,” (Int. MH2, 2021).

9.4 Measuring Success One theme that consistently arose throughout the research for this project is a mismatch between the true values and strengths that community composting offers to New Yorkers and the ways in which DSNY, the City, and political actors evaluate the success of the agency’s PNPPs. The metrics that receive the most attention and prominence in DSNY reporting about its compost programs are the number of tons of organic waste diverted from the refuse stream and the diversion rate. Second to diversion, are measures of geographic access, including the number of residents and households served by DSNY’s curbside collections, the number of FSDO locations, and the number of community districts that have drop-off sites. While these measures are important to understand the environmental benefits and cost savings of that the programs can deliver over business-as-usual, they do a poor job capturing the social and community benefits of local composting that were repeatedly highlighted by informants. These include outcomes related to community development, volunteer engagement, training, employment, and environmental stewardship. It’s apparent when speaking with administrators at the BRS that they do pay attention to these outcomes and see them as a point of pride for the PNPPs. Outcomes about the number of education and outreach like the number of workshops held, the number of students taught are included in BRS’s workplan with PNPP partners, (Int. NP4, 2021). However, this focus at the Bureau level does not seem to translate upward to the larger agency and City government. “There is such a disparity in the nature of what the Bureau of Recycling and Sustainability is compared to the much larger workforce at the Department of Sanitation… you see the challenges that come with communicating even internally at the department,” (Int. NP4, 2021). This may be because there are not hard distinctions made between the goals of municipal curbside collection, which is truly focused on access and diverting tonnage, and the goals of the community composting programs supported by PNPP. This mismatch in stated goals and realized outcomes may do a disservice to the PNPP’s success in impacting people and communities, therefore damaging the program’s perception in the eyes of its agency and political allies and stymying its ability to work towards social equity goals. The tension between the PNPP’s outcomes and their goals has only intensified as

85 / 97

DSNY has shifted community composting programs to focus on collection and processing, away from their early focus on education and outreach. Community composting systems built up over nearly three decades have been successful in creating community around compost sites, inspiring deep volunteer engagement, educating the public, building new career pathways, and catalyzing local stewardship, but they have faltered as pressure builds to process more material at the expense of this other work. No source directly blamed the nonprofit partners for this tension, instead directing their frustrations at the agency and larger City government. “I wouldn’t blame the nonprofits, I wouldn’t say its malicious intent, but it’s, you know, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, numbers, ‘we want to see metrics’ and they operate like that,” (Int. CC1, 2021). Whereas sources felt that CC’s benefit was in outreach and community engagement, they were upset when DSNY chose to discontinue staffed FSDO sites that performed below expectations. Sources felt that doing so compromised the PNPP’s ability to serve communities that had not received equal investment through education initiatives, and that small collections were more a representative of a lack of initial input from DSNY rather than a low demand from the area. “So if you do outreach at NYCHA, and you have a drop off site at NYCHA, and Sanitation realizes that that drop-off isn’t collecting as much as they think it should, they’ll shut it down.” (Int. CC1, 2021) Sources described staffed FSDO closures like this as a rare occurrence, and that they were always framed as a budgetary necessity. The action pits the need to expose more communities to compost activities against a need to ensure that each site collected enough material to make its operations worth it. Interviewees emphasized that without sustained engaged in communities, they had no opportunity to build a community of local organic recyclers. Another point of contention that nearly every source brought up is the FSDO’s “dots on a map” approach to FSDO access, which seeks to ensure that every community district (CD) has at least one drop-off location. While the equal attention given to each district is ostensibly a fair approach, significant differences in the physical and demographic environment of each area mean that social equity is not necessarily the result. “Even when we do get a food scrap

drop-off in every single community district in New York City, all New Yorkers are not going to be served,” (Int. NP5, 2021). Sources felt that a single FSDO is insufficient to serve NYC’s large CDs, the 59 of which range from populations of 50,000 to 250,000. They also noted that drop-off collection models work far more effectively in walkable areas; “a drop-off model…makes the most sense in a dense neighborhood,” (Int. NP1, 2021). The “other problem with this type of ‘dots on a map’ is the density in different neighborhoods in NYC varies so drastically…even

86 / 97

though it looked like very few [FSDOs] in Staten Island and the Bronx we had an equal number of drop-offs per resident as we did in Manhattan, because the population of Manhattan is so much denser per mile,” (Int. NP1, 2021). Given these nuances, the strategy to prioritize access by CD falls short of serving New Yorkers equitably. Despite this, interviewees maintained that the Sanitation Department and the City Council Members who returned their funding under COVID-19 remained singularly focused on the goal to serve every CD. NYCCP partner meetings with DSNY were described, “literally, most of the meetings were, ‘we have to put dots on the map, dots on the map, dots on the map’ that’s the way they talk about it, they’re not talking about the communities,” (Int. CC1, 2021). Interviewees felt that the purely geographic approach to service did not properly emphasize serving marginalized communities who had been overlooked in earlier composting efforts. “It’s not about this area needs composting, no its ‘the commissioner says we need more dots on the map by this date,’” (Int. CC1, 2021). “We did a survey at drop-offs where we determined that the average participant was coming from within a half-mile radius, and then DSNY prepared a map of NYC with a half-mile radius around every drop-off site, and our job was to fill in the gaps,” (Int. NP1, 2021). This purely geographic approach does not account for the temporal barriers to access: how many days a week is a site is open, on which days, for how many hours, and at what times of day. There is also little consideration given to the quality of the FSDO: whether it is a staffed pop-up site or a community operated site where there may be no one to assist or direct the uninitiated. For all these reasons DSNY and NYC politicians may be creating inequities across communities even as they attempt to achieve geographically equal service and outreach. As long as the City maintains its focus on collecting organics, diverting waste, and geographically distributing drop-off service community composting will struggle to perform functions that are not its central strengths. In order to shift this dynamic, DSNY may need to consider broadening the outcomes they seek to achieve through their PNPPs, or the City may need to reimagine the way that it classifies and supports community composters. Aside from the Sanitation Department’s favored metrics, other metrics of success might include: the

number of people educated, number of CC sites launched, number of local NYCCP volunteers, the number of volunteer hours committed, measures of FSDO site quality, measures of job quality (like pay and access to benefits), the proportion of organic waste processed locally (or within NYC), the amount of soil amended with high quality compost. Emphasizing the outcomes that community composting excels at rather than asking it to stand in for a defunct municipal collection program may allow it to be politically reframed and supported in new ways

87 / 97

that reach beyond the purview of DSNY over NYC’s waste. Even though the PNPP’s administrators at DSNY want the best for composting programs, they have little ability to shift the ways in which they can offer support outside of DSNY’s functions. Significant shifts must come from City Council or the Mayor’s office, as they dictate the funding and workplans for City agencies. As one source put it, “Currently, when it comes to composting, it’s considered waste, and because it’s considered waste, the federal funding goes straight to the Department of Sanitation. If composting was transitioned, and it wasn’t considered waste, it was classified as resource recovery, the money could be split” to support a greater multitude of outcomes (Int. CC1, 2021).

10. Recommendations and Conclusion As this project has demonstrated, composting in NYC will not be a “one size fits all” endeavor. The complex ecosystem of public, nonprofit, and private organizations that has emerged to meet NYC’s organics recycling needs is representative of the larger diversity and ingenuity found across the city’s communities. By further investing in the nonprofits, volunteer organizations and small businesses in this space the City can grow a new sector of green career pathways, build on positive social and community outcomes, recycle more of its organic waste locally, and expand understanding of and demand for composting services. Contrary to the hypothesis, this study found that the City’s PNPP did not deliver wholly inequitable results, but that our understanding of its impacts on the city’s different communities improves when we parse the types of the organizations involved. Community composters affiliated with the City’s PNPPs were able to serve more marginalized New Yorkers as they provided access to more poor and non-White residents than their City-funded counterpart FSDOs did. While this speaks to the important role that community embedded organizations like community gardens and community composters play in serving a diverse array of peoples it also reveals a situation where City resources that did support programs directly went to benefit NYC’s more well-off residents, and community composters that served marginalized communities did not benefit from public financial investment, relying on volunteer and nonprofit labor to serve the city’s poorer districts. This subjects NYC’s Black, brown and poorer communities to more service uncertainty and volatility and does not offer them the same level of educational resources about organics recycling.

88 / 97

The use of PNPP likely improved DSNY composting programs’ community connections and increased its beneficial social impacts, however the choice to work only with nonprofit partners and the strict municipal fiscal regulations under which the programs exist impeded their ability to collaborate more closely with related for-profit and informal organizations. In this unusual circumstance, micro-hauler and volunteer groups operating in the space shared some resemblance with the nonprofit partners. On one hand, the City’s PNPPs exhibit the ingenuity and creativity of the team at the BRS who, while embedded within their larger bureaucratic municipal agency, used creative agreement structures and funding mechanisms to meet some of the city’s shifting organic recycling needs. On the other hand, the PNPPs reveal the City’s lack of lack flexibility, political will, financial investment, interagency cooperation even on stated citywide strategic plans like 0x30, procurement and contracting regulations that may hinder agencies’ choice in partners, and a preference for easily measurable outputs that may overlook indirect beneficial long-term outcomes, like quality careers, workforce training, and community cohesion which are more difficult to quantify. The classification of composting as a waste management activity puts it naturally under the purview of the city’s Department of Sanitation, however given Community Composting’s benefits in training, employment, community development, volunteerism, local soil improvement, and engaging New Yorkers with nature, the initiative or its bureau may be better positioned working in direct collaboration with an interagency operator. Many people and organizations who operate in this space are passionate about waste equity and creating fair composting systems, but they do not always have the City’s support in doing that. This is for true for people operating from within government, within the nonprofits that it partners with, and in community composters and micro-haulers who do not benefit from direct public partnership. This project revealed that community composting’s strength is in its power and effect on people, and bringing them together to support this work, rather than its ability to divert and process lots of material. It’s clear that those people operate in a variety of places as volunteers, advocates, professionals, entrepreneurs, and civil servants. Political and

regulatory obstacles stand in the way of the public investment and work environment that they need to succeed, but it’s encouraging to witness these community composters build their collective power and push for world they, and we all need.

89 / 97

Recommendations

§ Center social equity in the City’s implementation of new and pilot programs by

prioritizing public investment in marginalized communities (low-income, Black, and brown neighborhoods), communities that have the least per-capita access to programs, and communities that have historically been overlooked by municipal investment. For the City’s PNPPs, that means shifting funding to prioritize areas that have been historically disinvested in, even if participation and engagement may initially be lower.

§ Ensure that municipal support reaches the nonprofits and community groups who

serve New York’s most marginalized communities. This research makes clear that

community organizations, in particular community gardens and unincorporated and volunteer led groups are often active in the city’s least advantaged communities. Strict financial controls prohibit agencies from working directly with these entities so reconfiguring regulations to enable them to access City support while still protecting against corruption may help serve marginalized people.

§ Reconsider the measures of success for the City’s compost Public Nonprofit

Partnerships to emphasize the program’s strengths in social outcomes including

community development, training, employment, consistent volunteerism, and environmental outcomes including environmental stewardship, soil amendment and local waste processing that avoids export emissions.

§ Ensure that the agency that manages composting PNPPs is mission-aligned with

its strengths and values. This may mean moving the partnership under the purview of

an interagency actor that is able to work across siloed City divisions to promote the wide breadth of positive outcomes possible through community composting.

§ Clarify the differing goals and mutual benefits for municipal curbside compost

collection and PNPP community composting programs. Where the former focuses

on waste diversion, the latter supports its work through community education and outreach, and directly involving New Yorkers in the practice of composting.

§ Work with micro-haulers to support the growth of a new sector in NYC’s green

economy and support small minority and women owned businesses. Similar to the MC

certification, the City may consider trainings in partnership with the nascent trade association that would assist marginalized New Yorkers in launching organics micro-hauling businesses that will create local jobs and help the City meet its environmental

90 / 97

goals.

§ Create incentives and subsidies to establish or expand mid-scale local

composting capacity in order to process more waste locally, export less to regional

neighbors, save vehicle miles travelled and fuel emissions, keep high quality compost in NYC for beneficial local use, and support the operations of micro-haulers and FSDOs.

§ Promote interagency collaboration to support mutually beneficial operations

between City agencies and nonprofit partners, including opportunities like using City

land for compost processing, using high-quality local compost to amend local soils and remediate brownfield sites, and encouraging the growth of quality green jobs in recycling and composting industries.

§ Explicitly allow organic household waste processing on NYC parkland, to avoid its

designation as public land alienation and allow long-term and permanent leases for sanctioned composting activities within the city’s largest landholder, covering 14% of NYC’s land area. This will offer immediate help to CCs whose biggest challenge is locating suitable spaces to operate and will enable the city to grow its internal processing capacity.

§ Utilize a public land trust to secure sites for local compost processing similar to

the models of the NY Community Land Trust and the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust. Such organizations can act as land banks, and support community composters with the technical, legal, and environmental regulatory framework required to establish compost processing facilities reducing the need for under-resourced nonprofits and community groups to develop those capacities internally.

§ Invest in the infrastructure required to process the city’s organic waste before

making organics recycling mandatory. As evidenced by the curbside pilot to date,

the private sector has not stepped in to meet demand and will require encouragement through public regulatory and financing mechanisms.

§ Enlist the expertise of community composters and the public to envision new

strategies for capturing household organic waste. The city’s nonprofits, CCs and

micro-haulers have a wealth of recommendations on how to improve the city’s composting systems to increases access and improve equity. The City can work with them directly as it crafts policy and actions to address this need.

91 / 97

This study has demonstrated that PNPPs can help city governments build equity into composting and sanitation services, and that partnering with nonprofit organizations can make service delivery more equitable and bolster ancillary social outcomes and local community benefits in municipal services that are typically considered technical problems to solve. The project has implications for other cities that seek to make their work more equitable, that wish to build out new municipal services and have active nonprofit and volunteer operators in the field, or that wish to establish and grow that activity at the community level. There are many possible directions for future research that would build on this project’s work. Researchers may survey people to understand why they are motivated to compost and what types of collection services are attractive. They may investigate how different ethnic culinary traditions affect food waste and composting activity. There are open questions about who is served by organics micro-haulers, the types and quality of jobs they’re creating, and what policies would help their fledgling industry expand. More work can also be done to understand what makes volunteers like Master Composters so dedicated to their work that they are willing to dedicate such a high amount of unpaid time and labor to their cause. Finally, there is room to expand our understanding of transparent and navigable municipal financial and contracting policy that enables cities to build productive nonprofit partnerships while protecting public dollars from abuse.

92 / 97

Bibliography Ahsan, A., Alamgir, M., Imteaz, M., Nik Daud, N.N., Islam, R., 2012. Role of NGOs and CBOs in

waste management. Iran. J. Public Health 41, 27–38. Andrews, R., Entwistle, T., 2010. Does Cross-Sectoral Partnership Deliver? An Empirical

Exploration of Public Service Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Equity. J. Public Adm. Res. Theory J-PART 20, 679–701.

Bagli, C.V., 2007. With Starrett City Deal Nearly Dead, Developer Tries Again. N. Y. Times. Becker, F., Patterson, V., 2005. Public: Private Partnerships: Balancing Financial Returns,

Risks, and Roles of the Partners. Public Perform. Manag. Rev. 4, 125–144. BIC, 2021. Business Integrity Commission [WWW Document]. URL

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/bic/index.page (accessed 5.24.21). Caputo, S., Schoen, V., Specht, K., Grard, B., Blythe, C., Cohen, N., Fox-Kämper, R., Hawes,

J., Newell, J., Poniży, L., 2021. Applying the food-energy-water nexus approach to urban agriculture: From FEW to FEWP (Food-Energy-Water-People). Urban For. Urban Green. 58, 126934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2020.126934

Carolini, G.Y., Raman, P., 2021. Why Detailing Spatial Equity Matters in Water and Sanitation Evaluations. J. Am. Plann. Assoc. 87, 101–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944363.2020.1788416

City of New York, 2020. Mayor de Blasio Unveils Budget Plan that Protects New Yorkers [WWW Document]. Off. Website City N. Y. URL http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/259-20/facing-unprecedented-crisis-mayor-de-blasio-budget-plan-protects-new-yorkers-by (accessed 4.10.21).

Community Composting Coalition, 2020. About - Save Community Composting in NYC [WWW

Document]. Save Community Compost. NYC. URL https://bigreuse.nationbuilder.com/about (accessed 5.25.21).

Connolly, J.J., Svendsen, E.S., Fisher, D.R., Campbell, L.K., 2013. Organizing urban ecosystem services through environmental stewardship governance in New York City. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.07.00

Danberg-Ficarelli, M., Peperone, R., Nurse, S., 2020. Microhauling Organics In NYC [WWW Document]. BioCycle. URL https://www.biocycle.net/microhauling-organics-nyc/ (accessed 5.24.21).

93 / 97

DSNY, 2021a. Report of the Finance Division on the Fiscal 2022 Preliminary Plan and the Fiscal 2021 Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report for the Department of Sanitation.

DSNY, 2021b. A Recovery for All of Us: Mayor de Blasio Announces Return of Curbside Composting, Major Expansions of Community Composting, Reuse, and Hazardous Waste Disposal Programs [WWW Document]. URL https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dsny/site/resources/press-releases/a-recovery-for-all-of-us-mayor-de-blasio-announces-return-of-curbside-composting-major-expansions-of-community-composting-reuse-and-hazardous-waste-disposal-programs (accessed 5.25.21).

DSNY, 2019. Report to the Committee on Finance and the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management on the Fiscal 2020 Executive Plan, the Ten-Year Strategy for Fiscal 2020- 2029, and Fiscal 2020 Executive Capital Commitment Plan.

DSNY, 2017. NYC Residential, School, and NYCHA Waste Characterization Study. New York City Department of Sanitation.

DSNY, 2014a. NYC Community Composting Report. New York City Department of Sanitation. DSNY, 2014b. Local Law 77 of 2013 Organics Collection Pilot Program Program Report,

through March 2014. New York City Department of Sanitation. DSNY, (Department of Sanitation of New York), 2017. NYC Residential, School, and NYCHA

Waste Characterization Study. New York City Department of Sanitation. DSNY, (Department of Sanitation of New York), 2015. 2015 NYC Organics Collection Report.

New York City Department of Sanitation. Ferrão, P., Fernandez, J., 2013. Sustainable Urban Metabolism. Cambridge, Massachusetts :

The MIT Press, [2013]. Fisher, D.R., Campbell, L., Svendsen, E.S., 2012. The organisational structure of urban

environmental stewardship. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2011.643367 Galka, M., 2016. What does New York do with all that trash? One city’s waste – in numbers.

The Guardian.

Gertsakis, J., Lewis, H., 2003. Sustainability and the waste management hierarchy. Retrieved January 30, 2008.

GrowNYC, 2020a. Let’s GrowNYC Together. GrowNYC. GrowNYC, 2020b. 2019 Annual Report. GrowNYC. Int. CC1, 2021. Interview, March 22, 2021. Int. DS1, 2021. Interview, March 21, 2021.

94 / 97

Int. DS2, 2021. Interview, March 26, 2021. Int. MH1, 2021. Interview, April 1, 2021. Int. MH2, 2021. Interview, March 19, 2021. Int. MH3, 2021. Interview, March 26, 2021. Int. NP1, 2021. Interview, March 20, 2021. Int. NP2, 2021. Interview, March 17, 2021. Int. NP3, 2021. Interview, March 31, 2021. Int. NP4, 2021. Interview, April 23, 2021. Int. NP5, 2021. Interview, March 9, 2021. Int. NP6, 2021. Interview, April 5, 2021. Int. NP7, 2021. Interview, April 16, 2021. Int. NP8, 2021. Interview, April 1, 2021. Jasny, L., Johnson, M., Campbell, L.K., Svendsen, E., Redmond, J., 2019. Working together:

the roles of geographic proximity, homophilic organizational characteristics, and neighborhood context in civic stewardship collaboration networks in Philadelphia and New York City. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11140-240408

Jooste, S.F., 2010. Exploring the Networks of Organizations that Enable and Govern Infrastructure Public-private Partnerships: An Organizational Field-level Perspective. Stanford University.

Joseph, K., 2006. Stakeholder participation for sustainable waste management. Solid Waste Manag. People Matter 30, 863–871. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2005.09.009

Lange, R., 2001. Composting in New York City: A Complete Program History. New York City Department of Sanitation.

Lange, R., 1999. Backyard Composting in New York City: A Comprehensive Program Evaluation. New York City Department of Sanitation.

Matter of Raritan Baykeeper Inc. v City of New York, 2013. Melosi, M., 2020. Fresh Kills: a history of consuming and discarding in New York City.

Melosi, M.V., 2016. Fresh Kills : The Making and Unmaking of a Wastescape. RCC Perspect. 59.

Melosi, M.V., 2006. Environmental Justice, Ecoracism, and Environmental History, in: Glave, D.D., Stoll, M. (Eds.), To Love the Wind and the Rain, African Americans and Environmental History. University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 120–132. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt5hjs5p.13

95 / 97

Mendel, S., Brundey, J.L., 2012. PUTTING THE NP IN PPP: The Role of Nonprofit Organizations in Public-Private Partnerships. Public Perform. Manag. Rev. 35, 617–642.

Muoio, D., n.d. New York City was on the verge of tackling its trash problem. Then Covid hit. [WWW Document]. Polit. PRO. URL https://politi.co/3hTqijZ (accessed 4.26.21).

Nagle, R., 2014. Picking up : on the streets and behind the trucks with the sanitation workers of New York City.

Neilson, S., 2009. Revaluing waste in New York City : planning for small-scale compost. c2009. NEW YORK CITY CHARTER, 2021. Nierenberg, A., 2020. Composting Has Been Scrapped. These New Yorkers Picked Up the

Slack. N. Y. Times. NYC Council, 2020. New York City Council Members Keith Powers and Antonio Reynoso

Introduce the “Community Organics and Recycling Empowerment (CORE)” Act [WWW Document]. Keith Powers. URL https://council.nyc.gov/keith-powers/news/new-york-city-council-members-keith-powers-and-antonio-reynoso-introduce-the-community-organics-and-recycling-empowerment-core-act/ (accessed 4.26.21).

NYC Master Composter Manual, 2019. Osei-Kyei, R., Chan, A.P.C., 2015. Review of studies on the Critical Success Factors for

Public–Private Partnership (PPP) projects from 1990 to 2013. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 33, 1335–1346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2015.02.008

Ostrom, E., 2010. Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems. Am. Econ. Rev. 100.

Platt, B., 2017. Hierarchy to Reduce Food Waste & Grow Community [WWW Document]. Inst. Local Self-Reliance. URL https://ilsr.org/food-waste-hierarchy/ (accessed 4.24.21).

Platt, B., Goldstein, N., Coker, C., Brown, S., 2014. State of Composting in the US. Institute for Local Self Reliance.

Pollans, L.B., 2017. Trapped in trash: ‘Modes of governing’ and barriers to transitioning to sustainable waste management. Environ. Plan. A 49, 2300–2323.

Pollans, L.B., Krones, J.S., Ben-Joseph, E., 2017. Patterns in municipal food scrap programming in mid-sized US cities. Resour. Conserv. Recycl. 125, 308–314.

Rajamanikam, R., Poyyamoli, G., Kumar, S., Lekshmi, R., 2014. The role of non-governmental organizations in residential solid waste management: a case study of puducherry, a coastal city of India. Waste Manag. Res. 32, 867–881.

96 / 97

Reynolds, K., Cohen, N., 2016. Beyond the kale: Urban agriculture and social justice activism in New York City. University of Georgia Press.

Rosengren, C., 2017. DSNY issues $34M RFP to operate 3 city compost sites with potential for more [WWW Document]. Waste Dive. URL https://www.wastedive.com/news/dsny-issues-34m-rfp-to-operate-3-city-compost-sites-with-potential-for-mor/505378/ (accessed 5.24.21).

Saadeh, D., Al-Khatib, I.A., Kontogianni, S., 2019. Public–private partnership in solid waste management sector in the West Bank of Palestine. Environ. Monit. Assess. 191, 243. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-019-7395-2

Savas, E.S., 1978. On Equity in Providing Public Services. Manag. Sci. 24, 800–808. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.24.8.800

Schrecongost, A., Danielle, P., Shrestha, R., Ban, R., Rosenboom, W.J., 2020. Citywide Inclusive Sanitation: A Public Service Approach for Reaching the Urban Sanitation SDGs. Front. Environ. Sci. 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2020.00019

Silvestre, H.C., Marques, R.C., Dollery, B., Correia, A.M., 2020. Is cooperation cost reducing? An analysis of public-public partnerships and inter-municipal cooperation in Brazilian local government. LOCAL Gov. Stud. 46, 68–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2019.1615462

Stremple, P., 2018. Waste Equity Bill Poised for Passage in City Council. Bklyner. URL https://bklyner.com/waste-equity/ (accessed 4.26.21).

Svendsen, E.S., Campbell, L.K., Fisher, D.R., Connolly, J.J.T., Johnson, M.L., Sonti, N.F., Locke, D.H., Westphal, L.M., Fisher, C.L., Grove, M., Romolini, M., Blahna, D.J., Wolf, K.L., 2016. Stewardship mapping and assessment project: a framework for understanding community-based environmental stewardship. https://doi.org/10.2737/NRS-GTR-156

Svendsen, E. s, Campbell, L.K., 2008. Urban ecological stewardship: understanding the structure, function and network of community-based urban land management.

UN Human Settlements Program, 2010. Solid waste management in the world’s cities : water

and sanitation in the world’s cities 2010., Solid waste management in the world’s cities : water and sanitation in the world’s cities 2010 / United Nations Human Settlements Programme.

U.S. Census Bureau, 1990a. Median Household Income in 1989 Dollars [WWW Document]. Soc. Explor.

U.S. Census Bureau, 1990b. Race [WWW Document]. Soc. Explor.

97 / 97

US EPA, O., 2015. Food Recovery Hierarchy [WWW Document]. US EPA. URL https://www.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/food-recovery-hierarchy (accessed 4.24.21).

Wang, J., McFadden, E.S., 2016. The Absence of Social Equity Measurement in Municipal Service Privatization: Are Residents Feeling Dumped on? State Local Gov. Rev. 48, 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/0160323X15624474

Warner, M.E., 2012. Privatization and urban governance: The continuing challenges of efficiency, voice and integration. Curr. Res. Cities 29, S38–S43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2012.06.007

Weiss, R.S., 1995. Learning from strangers : the art and method of qualitative interview studies [WWW Document]. URL http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=1963352

Wilson, D.C., Rodic, L., Scheinberg, A., Velis, C.A., Alabaster, G., 2012. Comparative analysis of solid waste management in 20 cities. Waste Manag. Res. 30, 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734242X12437569

Yin, R., 2008. Case Study Research: Design and Methods Third Edition. Thousand Oaks: Sage.