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Find out where to get free composting this summer for your yard, garden or neighborhood tree pits—made from decomposed food scraps and yard waste.
The Big Apple has added a new location to its roster of sites that give away free compost to New Yorkers. Made of decomposed food scraps and yard waste, this nutrient-rich material can be added to soil to help plants thrive all summer long.
Every Saturday until Sept. 27, residents in eastern Queens can now head to the corner of Hillside Avenue and Avenue C to grab up to 10 bags of compost, each weighing 40 pounds. Those who are interested must register online to book a time for pickup, and registration is limited to one request per household.
The location is the newest of four “Compost Giveback Sites” run by the city’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) that will operate through the fall and give away the same amount of material. The department currently has a Giveback Site in Staten Island’s Freshkills, one in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, and two in Queens.
DSNY also gives out compost at pop-up events throughout the city and delivers it in bulk to non-profit organizations, community gardens and street tree care volunteer groups. Information on how to participate is available online here.
The compost has been certified by the U.S. Composting Council Seal of Testing Assurance program and is made at DSNY’s Staten Island Compost Facility.
“The recently expanded facility has produced about 42 million pounds of finished compost per year over the last several years. After a 2024 expansion, it can now process about 170 million pounds of incoming material per year,” DSNY noted in a press release.
While the expansion boosted the site’s composting capacity by nearly 2,000 percent, it’s one of only two main facilities processing food waste in New York City. The other is in Brooklyn.
Last year, community composting groups and lawmakers pushed the administration to add at least one composting facility to each borough, since a lot of the organic waste collected by the Sanitation Department ends up being used for fuel instead of composting.
The city’s current facilities don’t just process organic waste for compost but also do anaerobic digestion, a process that extracts biogas, primarily methane, from the digested material and turns it into energy to heat buildings.
Adding a bunch of smaller facilities dedicated solely to composting and boosting local composting efforts could allow locals to have greater access to the material and foster community engagement, environmental groups argue.
“If we have the resources to do something for ourselves, then there’s a positive community reaction,” Nando Rodriguez, head of the environmental program at Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis) told City Limits earlier this year. “Having local community compost, to me, is empowering our community.”
Community groups around the city have been fighting for more local-based composting initiatives.
Last fall, the city slashed funding for community composting programs under the Adams administration’s budget cuts. While activists and lawmakers at City Council managed to secure over $6.2 million in last year’s budget to save the community programs, funds will only last until the fiscal year ends this June.
The City Council has proposed setting aside $7 million for community composting in the next fiscal year budget, but details are still under discussion. A new budget is due July 1.
Regardless of how the funding shakes out, many hope the city’s new required food waste recycling program will boost compost production. Since residential curbside composting became mandatory in April, DSNY said it saw record breaking numbers, collecting 5.24 million pounds of organic waste in its fourth week, a 500 percent increase over the same period the year before.
Fines issued to those who don’t comply have been put on hold until the end of the year, after complaints that the thousands of tickets handed out in the first weeks posed a burden for New Yorkers (though some lawmakers criticized the pause as undermining the Council’s efforts to reduce waste).
While most penalties are currently paused, DSNY continues to issue fines for buildings with more than 30 units if they receive four warnings for mixing trash with compostable material, a spokesperson said.*
Meanwhile, the city’s “Compost Giveback Sites” continue to receive composted material and redistribute it to New Yorkers, so check out where to get it on DSNY’s website and pick up a bag.
*This story was updated to note that the city is still fining larger buildings that accrue repeat composting violations.
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