OVERVIEW:

Current NYC regulations create obstacles for restaurants and other food businesses to give at least a portion of their food scraps and other organics like coffee grounds to the community compost sites that help green neighborhoods.  By helping a community compost site, they can show their  commitment to environmental stewardship, their community, and their local customers.  It's good for business!  It doesn't make sense for New York City to stand in the way. 

The New York City Council should change regulations to support rather than thwart community composting. Community composting happens in a neighborhood or at a college or place of work, and recycles organic material as locally as possible, "closing the loop." Material like food scraps travel the shortest possible distance, from residents' and restaurants' kitchens to a compost site and then, as compost, to greening projects in the same community -- like a school food garden or urban farm or street trees or bioswales to reduce storm-water runoff.  This approach is what’s known as decentralized composting, and it is the most sustainable when taking into account the hidden costs of harm to the environment from other approaches. The contrast is centralized composting that involves city-wide curbside collection of residential or commercial organic material that is transported a distance.