She stores her food scraps for two weeks in the freezer before it’s time for their pick-up. 

“Once you are in it, it becomes like second nature," Brooklyn Councilwoman Sandy Nurse said. "The same way you take a plastic bottle and you put it in the recycling bin is the same way you take the banana peel and put it over here.”

What You Need To Know

  • Sandy Nurse chairs the City Council's Sanitation Committee and vows to advocate for more composting

  • Adams wants to stop the expansion of curbside composting and save the money, calling the current effort "symbolic"

  • When disposed of in landfills, food waste produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas
  • Seven years ago, the City adopted the goal of sending zero waste to landfills by the year 2030

As a founder of the waste hauling service BK Rot and now the chair of the City Council’s Sanitation Committee, Sandy Nurse is an expert at composting and feels all New Yorkers should get on it. 

“The way to make it efficient is to make it mandatory, making it mandatory across the city,” Nurse said.

But the city has been slow to adopt this environmentally-conscious practice and Mayor Eric Adams, reversing a campaign promise, said last week he is putting a stop to the expansion of the city’s curbside composting efforts while saving $18.2 million in his first budget.

“I want to get it right, so that we won’t use taxpayer’s money and dollars just to do a symbolic program,” Adams said.

The city’s curbside composting program has struggled with low participation and limited scope.

Late last year, then Mayor Bill de Blasio restarted it after halting it during the pandemic.

It currently serves four community-board districts in Brooklyn, one in the Bronx and two in Manhattan, where the city picks up organic waste from some buildings.

It was seven years ago that the city adopted the goal of sending zero waste to landfills by the year 2030.

“We are not going to meet these goals if we don’t invest now,” Nurse said.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the mayor said Adams’ budget is preliminary and subject to change, adding that “New Yorkers should trust that the Adams administration is committed to transforming the city’s quality of life and fighting climate change.”

When disposed of in landfills, food waste produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Nurse believes composting is also a smart way to deal with the rodent problem the city faces.

“Most people around the world do this, right? And we are a city of immigrants, so a lot of people who live here are familiar with this practice," Nurse said.

The Department of Sanitation is encouraging New Yorkers to learn more about how to participate in the limited program by visiting nyc.gov/curbsidecomposting.