Controversial cuts to composting are drawing backlash from elected officials and environmental activists alike.

Local electeds and members of the Save Our Compost Coalition gathered outside City Hall Monday morning to call for a full restoration of funding for community composting in the Fiscal Year 2025 budget.

“This is a city issue. We’re providing a city service, and it should be funded by the city,” said Lena Frey, who is among the nearly 80 unionized compost workers now out of a job thanks to cuts to community composting programs. “It seems so overt and so obvious that in 2024, we shouldn’t be defunding important environmental services."

“It is hurting our environment, it will hurt our quality of life and it was the wrong thing to do,” Brooklyn City Councilmember Lincoln Restler added.

Last November, Mayor Eric Adams eliminated all government funding for the NYC Compost Project, which costs the city $7 million to operate annually. Monday’s rally coincides with the closure of more than 50 GrowNYC food scrap drop-off sites citywide.

“GrowNYC, which has diverted 24 million pounds of food scraps and hundreds of thousands of reusable household items from landfills since 2011, is closing all of their food scrap drop-off sites and laying off workers due to budget cuts, and it’s just not right,” Manhattan City Councilmember Shaun Abreu said.

Adams unveiled a $109 billion budget in January that included cuts to education, libraries and social services. The mayor’s budget director said the city had to make reductions while facing a multibillion-dollar gap.

“It’s a false narrative to say that the city cannot have all of these things, that the city cannot provide services for all of its residents,” Frey said.

City Department of Sanitation officials say the city still operates curbside composting through regular recycling pickup in Queens and Brooklyn. But advocates say that’s not enough.

“Our mayor has professed to be an environmentally concerned mayor, and he really needs to own that —not only restore this program, but expand it,” community activist David Vassar said.

Adams still needs to negotiate a final budget with the City Council before the July 1 deadline.