As NYC Reaches Budget Deal, Lawmakers Question Lack of Funding for Composting Outreach

The city stopped handing out fines to smaller residential buildings that don’t follow the city’s mandatory composting rules, saying it needs to do more public education on how to participate. But without a dedicated budget for outreach, can officials make that happen?

By June 30, New York City officials are set to decide on a budget for the upcoming 2026 fiscal year. 

As negotiations come to a head, lawmakers have raised concerns about the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) not having a dedicated budget for educating New Yorkers on the city’s mandatory curbside composting program.

Only two weeks after the city began enforcing the new composting rules on April 1, the administration suspended fines issued to non-complying residential buildings with 30 or fewer units until next year. 

The program remains mandatory and the city will still issue warnings. But pausing penalties for non-compliance, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office said, would allow the city to do “additional outreach and education on composting.” Residents “still have questions about this extremely important program,” the spokesperson added.

But DSNY’s Deputy Commissioner Joshua Goodman said in a hearing last month that  “there’s no additional or dedicated line item” in the budget for “outreach and education” specific to the program, and that they are using “existing resources” to get the word out instead.

“Clearly, the existing resources were not enough” if the administration was compelled to pause the fines to do more outreach, Councilmember and Sanitation Chair Shaun Abreu said at the hearing. 

He’s been critical of City Hall’s decision to suspend most enforcement, accusing the mayor of undermining the program with lack of resources. 

“The Mayor can’t cut corners, botch the roll out, and then turn around and blame New Yorkers for being confused, especially when he never prioritized educating them on the rules in the first place,” Councilmember Abreu said in a statement in April, after City Hall announced it was pausing the fines. 

Compliance with the rules, he said, “means investing real money in education.”

DSNY, however, says it has a whole communications and public affairs bureau dedicated to doing outreach and education on a wide range of issues, including composting. 

“To date, these teams have knocked on 740,000 doors, hosted more than 1,000 outreach events, sent multiple mailers to every New Yorker, and held multiple mayoral press conferences and several rounds of Commissioner-level media discussions on this topic, on TV, in print, and in community and ethnic press,” the department said in an email.

The fine factor

The decision to pause most ticketing was made after DSNY issued 4,257 fines in those first two weeks of enforcement. In the lead up the year before, the agency handed out free composting bins and issued over 30,000 warnings, but people still fell short of following the rules, raising alarm bells about how clued in New Yorkers are to how composting works.

Residents must toss compostable trash—including food scraps, food-soiled paper, leaves and yard waste—in a labeled container with a lid that is at least 55 gallons, or in a DSNY brown bin that can be purchased here. 

DSNY issued the most fines to neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens, while Manhattan saw fewer tickets, according to data the agency shared with City Limits. 

The most ticketed areas are hotspots for smaller homes, as nearly 79 percent of fined properties had fewer than eight units, accounting for more than 3,300 tickets.

Still, the city’s mandatory curbside composting program proved to be a huge success from the get-go. During the first week of enforcement, DSNY collected 2.5 million pounds of compost, a 240 percent increase when compared to the same time last year, the department told City Limits. 

So when the administration announced it would halt fines for smaller properties, some speculated the decision had more to do with politics than with a lack of compliance.

Hell Gate reported that it was Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro that took issue with the fines and ordered the pause. Republican lawmakers like Councilwoman Kristy Marmorato, who is sponsoring legislation to make curbside composting voluntary instead of mandatory, also took to social media to rally support against the penalties.

“This isn’t about the environment. It’s a cash grab, period,” Maramoto said on the social media platform X, claiming it was “just another tax for the working class.”

Owners of smaller buildings with up to eight units that fail to separate organic waste face $25 fines for their first offense, $50 for their second and $100 for their third. For buildings with more than nine units, the penalties start at $100 and can reach up to $300 with each failure to comply.

Second and third offenses are yet to be registered, but the buzz generated on social media about the fines amped up participation, environmentalists say.

“It had this initial effect of bringing it to people’s attention and that increased the participation rates,” said Justin Green, executive director of the non-profit Big Reuse. 

Since April, DSNY has collected on average 4.8 million pounds of organic waste per week, a sharp uptick from the 1 million pounds per week it collected in the same 11-week period last year, the department told City Limits.

Spreading the word

But Green and other environmental advocates agree that the threat of fines isn’t the only way to push New Yorkers to compost: the city also has to get the word out about what to do, and how to do it.

“You can’t expect the public to change their behavior without extensive efforts to explain why composting is important and how to participate,” said Eric Goldstein, New York City director at the environmental group National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

The Council is also pushing for $7 million in the upcoming budget deal to continue funding the Community Composting Program for All, which supports neighborhood organizations that run organic waste collection initiatives, some of them decades old. 

City Hall cut funds for these groups in 2023 as part of its belt-tightening measures at the time, though the Council restored much of it in last year’s budget. Community Composting plays a key role in public education and can help with curbside collection compliance, supporters argue. 

Recycling organic waste is good for the environment, and it saves New Yorkers money. Instead of spending tax dollars to transport waste into landfills outside the city, where it releases large quantities of carbon dioxide that drives climate change, materials can get repurposed and used for more environmentally friendly uses.

That includes turning it into compost so it can become plant fertilizer, and processing the waste to generate alternative forms of electricity that emit fewer greenhouse gasses.

But Goldstein says efforts to educate the public around the importance of organic waste recycling “have been minimal.”

DSNY disputes that. In addition to door knocking, outreach events, press conferences and printed mailers, the agency says it’s been working with community composting organizations to get the word out, and issued more than 11,000 warnings since the end of April to let residential properties know enforcement is in effect. 

Community composters like Nando Rodriguez ,who runs the environmental program at Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis), applauds these efforts. But more can always be done, he added, including more funding for outreach and investing in community composting.

“We live in a fast paced city. So the easier we can make it for residents to separate their waste and compost, the more people we will empower to become more sustainable,” Rodriguez said.

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