New York City official backs composting over codigestion, citing environmental justice concerns

A new report from Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso throws support behind Intro 696, a New York City bill that would require a large expansion in composting capacity across each of the city’s five boroughs.

Reynoso called for an increase in composting capacity over codigestion in New York City at a composting conference last week, the latest salvo in a tug of war over the city’s organics. While the city has implemented a codigestion program with utility National Grid at Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek Wastewater Recovery Facility as a solution for food waste, the benefits of such systems now seem insufficient compared to composting, Reynoso said.

“The diversion in the National Grid side was something 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that we thought was the best option. It’s what we knew then,” he said. “Things have changed.”

Reynoso’s office released a report after his speech identifying promising sites for composting facilities citywide. The report was prepared by his staff with support from the Brooklyn and Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Boards. It dismisses codigestion as a primary solution for organics, despite New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, National Grid and city officials promoting the technology at Newtown Creek and other wastewater treatment plants.

Following a presentation of the report, DEP officials pushed back on Reynoso’s criticism of codigestion. They argued that such systems could be expanded alongside community composting, especially as digesters can take in materials like fats, oils and greases that composters don’t accept.

“We support this study, we want to see more community composting … but DEP would really value being part of that conversation and helping to give some information about where we see digesters as being part of the solution,” Brendan Hannon, an energy program analyst at the Office of Energy and Resource Recovery Programs in DEP, said at the event.

The debate over composting versus anaerobic digestion has received close attention in New York City in recent years, in part as budget cuts and a decisions by the city’s parks department have put composters at a disadvantage. City council members have sparred with Mayor Eric Adams’ administration over its use of anaerobic digestion in recent hearings, and went around his administration to return funding cut from the city’s community composting program over the summer. 

Meanwhile, the city rolled out the nation’s largest residential curbside organics collection program in October. The amount of organics that must be processed through that program could be substantial — New York City’s most recent waste characterization study found that residents disposed of roughly 1.2 billion pounds of food. 

Intro 696, which has received about two dozen sponsors in the city council, would tip the city’s processing capacity in favor of composting. As currently written, it would require New York City’s Sanitation Department to ensure each borough has enough compost processing capacity to handle at least 180,000 wet tons of food waste annually, not to be commingled with other wastes. The bill would set this mandate for each borough on a multiyear timeline, with Queens and Staten Island required to comply by Jan. 1, 2026; Brooklyn and the Bronx by March 1, 2027; and Manhattan by May 1, 2027.

New York City projects spending more than $471 million on exporting waste in fiscal year 2024, equal to a quarter of the Sanitation Department’s budget. Reynoso’s office argued in its report that that total could decrease as more organics are captured, though such reductions will correspond with a rise in organics processing.

Nevertheless, his office notes that any increase in spending on organics processing can and should be allocated to facilities within the city, keeping the money within the local economy. 

The report also raises environmental justice concerns with the present organics system, in which an increased number of trucks have been routed to WM’s Varick Avenue transfer station for pre-processing. The trucks deliver organics to be processed into a slurry, which is then trucked again to Newtown Creek.