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Omaha Steve

(99,653 posts)
Sun Jun 16, 2013, 08:18 PM Jun 2013

(NYC) City to Roll Out A Recycling Plan For Food Waste

Source: NY Times

By MIREYA NAVARRO

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has tried to curb soda consumption, ban smoking in parks and encourage bike riding, is taking on a new cause: requiring New Yorkers to separate their food scraps for composting.

Dozens of smaller cities, including San Francisco and Seattle, have adopted rules that mandate recycling of food waste from homes, but sanitation officials in New York had long considered the city too dense and vertically structured for such a policy to succeed.

Recent pilot programs in the city, though, have shown an unexpectedly high level of participation, officials said. As a result, the Bloomberg administration is rolling out an ambitious plan to begin collecting food scraps across the city, according to Caswell F. Holloway IV, a deputy mayor.

The administration plans to announce shortly that it is hiring a composting plant to handle 100,000 tons of food scraps a year. That amount would represent about 10 percent of the city’s residential food waste.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/nyregion/bloombergs-final-recycling-frontier-food-waste.html?partner=EXCITE&ei=5043&_r=0




Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

Maxie Santiago, a special-education teaching assistant who lives on the sixth floor of the Helena, prepared to empty his food scraps into a collection bin.
10 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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(NYC) City to Roll Out A Recycling Plan For Food Waste (Original Post) Omaha Steve Jun 2013 OP
Finally a sensible Bloomberg initiative.. ny Earth_First Jun 2013 #1
It's done here in Toronto. PDJane Jun 2013 #2
NYC sabbat hunter Jun 2013 #3
NYC Recently LiberalElite Jun 2013 #5
oh cools sabbat hunter Jun 2013 #6
Nice! We compost at home and are quite disturbed to see people throwing out perfectly AllyCat Jun 2013 #4
if I had the room sabbat hunter Jun 2013 #7
that's not how most big city composting programs work CreekDog Jun 2013 #8
I know that sabbat hunter Jun 2013 #10
Cool! I recently stayed in a place where they had municipal composting as petronius Jun 2013 #9

PDJane

(10,103 posts)
2. It's done here in Toronto.
Sun Jun 16, 2013, 08:34 PM
Jun 2013

We put food scraps into a separate bin, papers into another, drugs go back to the drug store, batteries back to a collection point, along with fluorescent bulbs....cans, bottles, keurig pods, bags, candy wrappers, plastic of all sorts.....that's how it is. You get used to it.

AllyCat

(16,188 posts)
4. Nice! We compost at home and are quite disturbed to see people throwing out perfectly
Sun Jun 16, 2013, 09:11 PM
Jun 2013

good items for compost. I've even brought home compostables from work to add to our pile. You can NEVER have enough it seems.

sabbat hunter

(6,829 posts)
7. if I had the room
Tue Jun 18, 2013, 03:25 PM
Jun 2013

I would do it. but I have a very small backyard and no real room for it. I also do not have a lawn to get clippings for it.

CreekDog

(46,192 posts)
8. that's not how most big city composting programs work
Tue Jun 18, 2013, 04:09 PM
Jun 2013

you dispose of compostable waste in bins and the city picks them up, weekly or whatever the schedule is.

you don't compost yourself.

sabbat hunter

(6,829 posts)
10. I know that
Wed Jun 19, 2013, 09:37 PM
Jun 2013

but I would love to have my own compost bin. It would mean I had a big backyard for gardening, tree planting.

petronius

(26,602 posts)
9. Cool! I recently stayed in a place where they had municipal composting as
Tue Jun 18, 2013, 04:14 PM
Jun 2013

well as recycling pick-up: I was really surprised at the variety of materials that could go into the composting, and amazed at how little actual trash there really was (minus the compost-able and the recyclable)...

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