New York City now mandates composting. Next comes the hard part.

In 2022, more than 120 municipal or county governments in California asked for an extension of the deadline requiring them to add green bins to their waste-hauling services, according to a report from the Little Hoover Commission, a nonpartisan, legislature-appointed government oversight board. 

Despite the challenges, California has had some notable successes implementing statewide composting, and through trial and error, its programs have improved. Lawmakers have also updated regulations to make the system work better for different locations.

In 2024, several new laws were added to the books with that goal in mind. One of them was AB 2902, which extends the exemptions from compost collection for areas with low populations until 2037, and allows them to continue applying for five-year extensions.

“We’re trying to build in more flexibility on the regulations,” said John Kennedy, policy advocate for Rural County Representatives of California.

Other legislation signed in 2024 will streamline the permitting requirements for new small and midsized composting facilities and expand the types of composted material that cities and counties can buy in order to meet requirements in SB 1383 that compost be purchased for landscaping and community gardens. This helps make the programs economically viable by ensuring that there are buyers for what the facilities produce.

These efforts have started to pay off.

Almost 80 percent of state and county jurisdictions now have curbside organic waste collection in place. For Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for the nonprofit Californians Against Waste, that’s a big win, especially considering that the pandemic struck just as many communities were launching their programs.

In San Francisco, the city’s waste management contractor, Recology, picks up more than 500 tons of organic material per day — outpacing the collection of recycled materials — and has produced over 2.7 million tons of compost since the program’s inception, according to the company’s data.

“We’re at the fun part,” Lapis said, where the focus can shift from setting up programs to public education and outreach.

Lapis feels optimistic that California will start seeing more organic waste diverted from landfills, and he urges cities not to talk about their green bins as a matter of complying with a statewide requirement but to instead ​“talk about the soil and how we’re using it to grow food, which then kind of explains to people why they need to keep plastic out of the bin.”

As New York City rolls out its program, city staff are also turning their attention to public education and marketing to reach as many New Yorkers as possible before this spring, when fines will be issued for residences that do not comply.

That outreach campaign includes digital, print, and radio ads, posters in the subway and other public places, as well as doorknocking, contacting landlords and tenant groups, and hosting public events.

“The city just needs to keep doing outreach for a couple years, pretty intensively, alongside with enforcing the rules, until there’s actual behavior change,” Green said.

Alongside the municipal program, Green also sees a role for community-led groups such as Big Reuse that get people excited about the benefits of composting. Over the past decade, he’s watched how small-scale efforts at farmers markets and community gardens helped build the grassroots support that made citywide composting possible.

“A lot of environmental change starts to happen at the community level,” he said.