The GrowNYC Compost Program is typically focused on collecting your food scraps, but this spring, we’re also giving away free compost made from the food scraps we’ve collected in the last year! This is our annual act of reciprocity: we're closing the loop and giving thanks to the thousands of New Yorkers who have saved their food scraps from landfills by bringing them to our Food Scrap Drop-off sites. Small, 2-pound bags of ready-to-use compost will be available on a first-come, first-served basis while supplies last, as outlined below.

Compost Made in NYC

The compost for this Giveback is provided by two New York City Compost Project host sites: Earth Matter NY and Queens Botanical Garden. If you’ve dropped off food scraps with GrowNYC, then the bag of compost you’ll receive may contain nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium from your very own peels and pits. That’s what we mean when we say “closed loop.”

Compost Giveback Schedule

Quantities are limited and based on average weekly participation at each drop-off site, so consider coming early to make sure you get a bag.

2022 COMPOST GIVEBACK DATE	BOROUGH	LOCATION	TIME	COMPOST MADE BY
Friday, April 1	Queens	Corona Food Scrap Drop-off Roosevelt Ave & 103 St	8am-1pm	Queens Botanical Garden
Sunday, April 3	Queens	Jackson Heights Greenmarket 79th St and Northern Blvd	8:30am-2pm	Queens Botanical Garden
Sunday, April 3	Queens	Forest Hills Greenmarket 70th Ave & Austin St	9am-1pm	Queens Botanical Garden
Thursday, April 7	Queens	Kew Gardens Food Scrap Drop-off Metropolitan Ave & Audley St	9:30am-12:30pm	Queens Botanical Garden
Saturday, April 9	Queens	Sunnyside Greenmarket Skillman Ave & 42nd St	9am-1pm	Queens Botanical Garden
Saturday, April 9	Queens	Ridgewood Food Scrap Drop-off Myrtle Ave & Cypress Ave	9:30am-1:30pm	Queens Botanical Garden
Wednesday, April 27	Manhattan	Madison Sq. Park Food Scrap Drop-off 23rd St & Broadway	8am-1pm	Earth Matter
Wednesday, April 27	Manhattan	Dag Hammarskjold Plaza Greenmarket E. 47th St and 2nd Ave	8am-12:30pm	Earth Matter
Thursday, April 28	Manhattan	181st St Food Scrap Drop-off 181st St & Fort Washington Ave	7am-12:30pm	Earth Matter
Thursday, April 28	Manhattan	145th St Food Scrap Drop-off 145th St & Edgecombe Ave	7:30am-12pm	Earth Matter
Thursday, April 28	Manhattan	Tucker Sq. Greenmarket 66th St & Columbus Ave	8am-11am	Earth Matter
Thursday, April 28	Brooklyn	Wilson Ave Food Scrap Drop-off Wilson Ave & Moffat St	9am-1pm	Earth Matter
Friday, April 29	Manhattan	97th St Greenmarket W 97th & Amsterdam	8am-12:30pm	Earth Matter
Friday, April 29	Manhattan	E 96th St East 96th St & Lexington Ave	7:30am-11:30am	Earth Matter
Saturday, April 30	Brooklyn	Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket Court St & Montague St	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, April 30	Brooklyn	Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket Flatbush Ave & Eastern Pkwy (north of the arch)	8am-2pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, April 30	Brooklyn	McCarren Park Greenmarket N 12th St and Driggs Ave	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Wednesday, May 5	Bronx	Mott Haven Food Scrap Drop-off 545 East 142nd Street	9am-12pm	Earth Matter
Wednesday, May 5	Bronx	Morrisania Food Scrap Drop-off McKinley Square at 169th St & Boston Rd	10am-1pm	Earth Matter
Thursday, May 5	Brooklyn	Franklin Ave Food Scrap Drop-off Eastern Parkway & Franklin Ave	8:30am-11:30am	Earth Matter
Thursday, May 5	Brooklyn	Prospect Heights Food Scrap Drop-off Park Place & Carlton Ave	8am-11am	Earth Matter
Thursday, May 5	Bronx	Norwood Farmstand E Gun Hill Rd & Dekalb Ave	9am-2pm	Earth Matter
Thursday, May 5	Bronx	BronxWorks Food Scrap Drop-off 1130 Grand Concourse	10am-1pm	Earth Matter
Friday, May 6	Bronx	New Roots Community Farm Food Scrap Drop-off 670 Grand Concourse	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Friday, May 6	Bronx	Fordham Plaza Food Scrap Drop-off E Fordham Rd & 3rd Ave	8am-11:30am	Earth Matter
Friday, May 6	Bronx	Montefiore Fresh Food Box 871 Prospect Ave	11am-2pm	Earth Matter
Friday, May 6	Bronx	Parkchester Food Scrap Drop-off Westchester Ave & White Plains Rd	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Friday, May 6	Brooklyn	Cypress Hills Food Scrap Drop-off Fulton St & Richmond St	10am-1pm	Earth Matter
Friday, May 6	Brooklyn	Crown Heights Farmstand Eastern Parkway & Franklin Ave	8:30am-11:30am	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 7	Brooklyn	Kensington Food Scrap Drop-off McDonald Ave & Albemarle Rd	8:30am-11:30am	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 7	Brooklyn	7th Ave Sunset Park Greenmarket 7th Ave & 44th St	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 7	Brooklyn	Bay Ridge Greenmarket 3rd Ave & 95th Street	8am-12:30pm	Earth Matter
Sunday, May 8	Brooklyn	Bensonhurst Food Scrap Drop-off 18th Ave & 81st St	9am-1pm	Earth Matter
Sunday, May 8	Brooklyn	Carroll Gardens Greenmarket Smith St and 1st Pl	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Sunday, May 8	Manhattan	77th/79th Sts Greenmarket 77th St between Columbus Ave & Central Park West	9am-3pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 14	Brooklyn	Fort Greene Greenmarket Washington Park & Myrtle Ave	9am-2pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 14	Brooklyn	Bed-Stuy Fresh Food Box Decatur St and Lewis Ave	11am-3pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 14	Manhattan	Abingdon Sq. Greenmarket W12th St & 8th Ave	8am-2pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 14	Manhattan	Tribeca Greenmarket Greenwich St & Duane St	8am-1pm	Earth Matter
Saturday, May 14	Manhattan	Inwood Greenmarket Seaman Ave & Isham St (N corner)	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Sunday, May 15	Brooklyn	Cortelyou Greenmarket Argyle Rd and Cortelyou Rd	9am-1pm	Earth Matter
Sunday, May 15	Manhattan	Columbia Greenmarket 116th St & Broadway	8am-12pm	Earth Matter
Sunday, May 15	Manhattan	Asphalt Green Food Scrap Drop-off East 91st St & York Ave	7:30am-12:30pm	Earth Matter
Friday, June 24	Bronx	Lincoln Hospital Greenmarket 149th St b/t Park and Morris Aves	8am-12pm	Earth Matter

How to Use Compost

You don’t need to have a backyard or garden to have a use for compost. Indoor plants benefit from an annual application of compost, and we all have access to street trees that can use some love. We recommend mixing your compost into soil at a ratio of at least 3 parts soil to 1 part compost for best results.

• For outdoor plants: Rake, sprinkle, or mix the compost into the soil of garden or tree beds.
• For indoor plants: Gently mix an inch of compost into the top layer of potting soil, or blend with potting soil when repotting.

Compost is not shelf-stable, and will not store well. Please use your compost within a week or two of receiving it.

Our small Compost Giveback bags are also compostable. Please remove the tin tie and sticker before bringing the empty bag back to a GrowNYC Food Scrap Drop-off site for composting.

Looking for a larger quantity of compost?

The GrowNYC Compost Program has the opportunity to give out finished compost bags made at the Staten Island Compost Site by the Department of Sanitation. We have 150 bags of approximately 30 lbs. each that we can deliver to interested participants at our designated food scrap drop-off sites for pick-up. Please fill out our form to request finished compost and we'll get in touch with you. Note that due to limited supplies, we cannot guarantee that you will be able to receive finished compost. The Department of Sanitation is also listing options for receiving or picking up larger quantities of finished compost on their website here. 

What is compost, anyway?

During Compost Giveback events, there’s often some confusion about what we’re giving away and why. Here are a few definitions to know:

• Food Scraps (noun) – the uneaten foods or parts of food. Calling these items scraps, rather than waste, highlights their value and potential for beneficial use, including human and animal consumption of rescued edible foods, composting, and anaerobic digestion.

• Composting (verb) - the process of aerobic, biological decomposition that transforms organic materials like food scraps and fallen leaves into compost.

• Compost (noun) – a soil amendment that resembles dark, crumbly topsoil, has a pleasant earthy smell, and has no resemblance to the original organic materials from which it is made. Compost refers to the finished product of the composting process, and is not to be confused with food scraps, which are just one ingredient in the composting process.

• Soil (noun) – the upper layer of earth in which plants grow. Healthy soil consists of 45% minerals, 25% water, 25% air, and 5% organic matter. Soil is not to be confused with compost, which is a soil amendment that adds organic matter and beneficial microbes to soil.

When you drop off your food scraps with GrowNYC, we bring them to composting facilities, where they’re mixed with carbon-rich materials like leaves and wood chips, and transformed into compost. The finished compost can be used to improve soil quality for houseplants, gardens, and street trees alike.

Additional Resources

• How to Use Compost Tip Sheet from NYC Compost Project
• See the New York City Street Tree Map for tips on how to care for urban trees.
• For information about getting compost in larger quantities, visit nyc.gov/getcompost. 

The compost giveback is made possible by funding from the NYC Department of Sanitation.

This year’s Super Bowl is being touted as the “greenest ever”.  Out-green the Meadowlands with these tips for your own Super Bowl party!
 

• Pick up local veggies, pickles, bread and other treats at your neighborhood Greenmarket.  Don’t forget kale, the official vegetable of Superbowl 48!  Find menu ideas here. 

• Save food scraps and paper napkins for composting at one of our Greenmarkets, or let guests know they can include meat and dairy if you participate in NYC’s Curbside Organics Program. 

• Set up recycling bins for bottles, cans, salsa jars, hummus tubs, pizza boxes and more.

• If you only watch the game, commercials or half-time show, take some of that down time to find items for next week's Stop ‘N’ Swap (or give them as impromptu party favors)!

Since 2011, GrowNYC has worked to expand food scrap collections at Greenmarket. In partnership with the NYC Department of Sanitation, the program has grown to 30 markets, averaging 100,000 pounds a month diverted from disposal and used locally for renewable energy or fertile compost for urban farms, gardens and more.

To date more than 2 million pounds of food scraps have been dropped at market, which would fill enough of our collection boxes to create a stack taller than Mount Everest! But the impact is even greater: every apple core deposited in a compost bin has been a vote for increased composting citywide, which has come to fruition with the Department of Sanitation’s new Organics Collection Program. Keep on composting!

Read the complete press release here.

(Residents at the Morningside Gardens cooperative celebrate their new compost program)

Organics make up almost 30% of NYC's residential and institutional waste stream. This includes yard waste, food scraps, compostable paper (tissues, napkins, soiled paper, paper plates, etc.), and other materials suitable for industrial-scale composting.

By collecting this material, NYC can reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill and incinerators, reducing expensive export costs and greenhouse gas emissions, all while generating a valuable material that can be used as fertilizer in NYC parks and gardens.

In May of 2013, the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) began a bold, new initiative to provide curbside collection of organics. The Program started in Westerleigh, Staten Island and this fall has expanded to include communities in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island, with further expansion in the spring of 2014.        

Wondering how you can participate? 

The City provided bins and participation instructions to buildings with 1-9 units included in the pilot areas. DSNY is also recruiting large apartment buildings—on the west side of Manhattan, in parts of Brooklyn, and on Staten Island—to participate in the program. GrowNYC is assisting with this effort, and we can help your building with the signup process, and to prepare your tenants and staff to participate. 

Take Morningside Gardens, who joined the DSNY Organics Collection Program in June, for example. Prior to the program’s implementation, many of the residents dropped off food scraps at GrownNYC’s Columbia Greenmarket and a group of residents formed a Compost Club.  GrowNYC worked with club members, property management, and the co-op board to help the 980-unit complex create a plan to establish organics collection to be serviced by DSNY.  GrowNYC provided hands-on assistance in creating a suite of educational materials and training to ensure that staff and residents were well-informed about the program, which included mailers detailing the program, attendance at a series of public meetings, and signage in every trash room.

With the addition of this initiative, Morningside Gardens now diverts 39% of all waste from landfills through recycling and composting, compared to an average diversion rate of 14% for their community district as a whole.  Overall improvement of waste separation and storage has also reduced the presence of rats on the property. To highlight the success of the program at Morningside Gardens, Mayor Bloomberg chose the site as the location to announce the expansion of the DSNY Organics Collection Program and to launch the “Recycle Everything” advertising campaign in July of 2013.

Does your apartment building want to take recycling to the next level? 

Get more information on Organics Collection in Large Residential Buildings and contact GrowNYC’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education to get started. 

GrowNYC's School Recycling Champions program works with schools in all five boroughs to help them achieve and exceed the NYC recycling standards. They work to inform and empower the key participants in a school by providing hands-on education through materials, workshops, assemblies, and on-site demonstrations.

Recycling Champions has five outreach coordinators, each of whom works in a particular borough. Below, Manhattan Outreach Coordinator Julia Goldstein takes us through a typical day in her life as a Recycling Champion.

What I love about being a Recycling Champions coordinator is how much creativity and dedication the principals, teachers, custodians, kitchen staff, recycling coordinators, parents, and above all the students, all over the city bring to making their school environment more sustainable.

Let me give you some examples from a typical day:

The first stop of the day is my office, where I pick up materials for workshops I’m doing on the new Organics Food Scraps Collection program at Chelsea Prep (281 9th Avenue in Chelsea). I make sure to grab a coffee from Laughing Man on the way to the C train.

In the 2013-2014 school year, over 300 schools in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Brooklyn are participating in the Organics Collection Program, a joint initiative between the NYC Departments of Education and Sanitation. The goal is to collect the organic material from school cafeterias and kitchens to reduce the waste NYC sends to landfills. Organic Food Scraps Collection includes: meat, fish, dairy, vegetables, fruit, grains, baked goods and all soiled food service paper products.

I chat with the school’s Fireman, Ed Pierre, who has been working hard to get the new Organics signs up in the cafeteria

On Saturday I’ll go to another workshop at Chelsea Prep that includes parents, and we’ll use this, a trivia game created by RCP’s Thaddeus Copeland. The Trivia Game is one of several tools we use to engage the students in participatory learning. A student spins the wheel and depending on which icon they land on, they are asked a recycling-related trivia question

I hop back on the C to 110th Street to my second stop: Wadleigh Secondary School for the Visual & Performing Arts (215 W 114th Street in Morningside Heights).

I touch base with Al Spechar, the Custodial Engineer, who shows me a new system he is trying for separating the curbside recycling – he has painted green lines around where the paper recycling goes, and hung a mixed paper and cardboard recycling decal. Great idea! It makes it easier for the Sanitation workers if it’s always in the same place, and it makes it easy to check to make sure each type of recycling has been put out.

I jump back on the C train to 86th Street and go on to my next stop: Louis D. Brandeis High School (145 W 84 Street in the Upper West Side).  I check in with Helena Fisher, the SchoolFood Manager , to see how the Food Scraps Toter bins are working for them. We talk about how frequently they need new bags – the students are catching on to the Food Scraps Organics program faster than we had hoped!

I board the cross town bus and grab a seat and work on email. I spend so much time on public transportation it feels like my second office.

My next stop: Robert F. Wagner Middle School (220 E 76th Street in the Upper East Side). I meet with the 6th grade cafeteria recycling monitors, who make the fantastic recycling station work every day. They bring both knowledge and tact to the job of reminding their peers of the recycling rules.

I take the 4/5 back downtown to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall for my final stop of the day: Murry Bergtraum High School (411 Pearl Street in the Financial District). The sustainability coordinator, Bob Menning, walks with me through the school. Bob takes his role seriously and his energetic and talented Green Team students, like Elena Tsoy, bring creative flair to the task -- they’ve hung signs throughout the cafeteria and school reminding classmates and faculty/staff of best recycling practices.

That’s my last visit and all that’s left is to convince my fellow rush-hour passengers on the 4/5 train to make room for me and my Santa-sized bag. To their credit, being New Yorkers, they hardly give it a second glance.

GrowNYC is proud to support Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership in expanding recycling in NYC with the launch of "Recycle Everything."

In 2006, the City created GrowNYC’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education to assist their ambitious goals to divert more waste from disposal. Whether promoting textile, e-waste, and increased plastics recycling or working with the Department of Sanitation to establish organics recycling programs like those happening at Morningside Gardens (where this week’s press conference took place), GrowNYC is thrilled to be a component of the City’s efforts. The "Recycle Everything" ad campaign launched and the expansion of the City’s organic food waste recycling program shows how far New York has come in managing the 11,000 tons of waste generated every day. Together, these initiatives will help double our recycling rate by 2017 and reduce the amount of trash sent to landfills.

GrowNYC was proud to help establish the Morningside Heights organics collection and will promote the City’s Recycle Everything campaign in its education outreach across the five boroughs.

New York News

On Sunday, city officials, community partners, and compost enthusiasts gathered at the Carroll Gardens Greenmarket to celebrate a benchmark for GrowNYC’s food scrap collection program: ONE MILLION POUNDS!

Since the pilot program launched in March 2011, one million pounds of food scraps have been dropped off at Greenmarket’s collection sites, diverting that much food from the waste stream.

Emily Rubenstein, Assistant Commissioner of Sanitation, Recycling and Sustainability at DSNY, City Council Member Brad Lander, Birdie NYC and GrowNYC Executive Director Marcel Van Ooyen applauded the efforts of all those who have made this achievement possible.

“We’re thrilled that Speaker Quinn and the New York City Council helped launch the compost program last year and that DSNY stepped in this year to bring the successful pilot to the next level.  We’re demonstrating that the City of New York is not lagging far behind California and other places where compost has taken root. New Yorkers across the City are eager to participate and reduce waste while creating a valuable resource that will benefit local gardens and farms,” said GrowNYC Executive Director Marcel Van Ooyen.

Look up your nearest food scrap drop-off site here, and find out what can be contributed here. Once it’s dropped off, the material is transported to compost sites and urban agriculture projects within the five boroughs. We’re also signing people up for our winter incentive program—the Winter Compost Warrior. Visitors can sign in at our info tent when they visit the market, noting their weekly attendance and compost contribution. There’s a compost-related prize in it for those Winter Compost Warriors who check in ten or more times in the coming twelve weeks.

At the beginning of the New Year, this monumental benchmark lets us set a new goal for the year ahead. How much compost can we make in 2013?

Photo by Vitaliy Piltser

 

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers have shown an abundance of compassion toward one another. One unintended result of this generous spirit has been an oversupply of material donations, particularly clothing. Piles of unneeded clothing have created a waste disposal problem in many communities affected by the storm, compounding the challenge of removing the damaged contents of homes. This excess of donations creates a new burden of storing, disposing or transporting items that cannot be used by storm victims, such as summer clothing. An estimated 60% of donations received are unusable and, while well-intentioned, this outpouring of material support has helped to create landfills out of parking lots in these communities.   Before donating supplies, please check which items are specifically needed at relief locations. Rather than donating used items to relief sites, consider bringing them to a charitable resale store, where they can help to raise funds for disaster recovery. For more information on waste-free donations, visit NYC WasteLess. Excess clothing collected for storm victims can instead be dropped for reuse or recycling with GrowNYC’s textile recycling partner, Wearable Collections, at several Greenmarket locations. Wearable Collections has announced that despite losing their fleet of collection trucks from flooding in Red Hook, they will double their monetary return contribution for clothing donations to the charity of your choice. For other items that are still usable, find new homes at one of our upcoming Stop ‘N’ Swaps, a free community reuse and exchange event. One of the best ways to help is to donate money to GrowNYC, the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City or other reputable Sandy-Relief charities.  Cash donations ensure that the right supplies are purchased for those in need and also removes logistical problems such as storage and waste disposal. Blood is also in high demand; find a donation site via The Red Cross. GrowNYC is on the ground providing staff and resources to help the victims of Sandy through collecting and distributing Greenmarket food to community kitchens and other outlets in impacted neighborhoods, helping to redistribute unwanted clothing donations, rebuilding devastated school and community, volunteering at shelters and supply distribution facilities and more. We will continue to work our utmost to provide New Yorkers with programs to reduce their environmental footprint and support our local economy. Please consider donating to GrowNYC or signing up to volunteer.

On Sunday, August 12th the GrowNYC crew had their second textile recycling event at Confucius Plaza in as many months. OROE volunteers Nga Yan and Shi Chao came out to lend a hand in diverting over 2,250 lbs from the landfills, bringing the total to over 3 tons of materials in just two days! We’d like to give a special thanks and congratulations to the management and residents of Confucius Plaza for their partnership and enthusiasm. Here's to another successful foray in community supported recycling! GrowNYC currently offers weekly textile collection at 19 Greenmarkets. If you are interested in hosting a one-time textile collection in your community, please contact us at (212) 788-7964.

Greenmarket and GreeNYC will be promoting reusable bags with GreeNYC mascot Birdie at the Union Square Greenmarket at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, August 8. Stop by to meet Birdie and make a pledge to reduce the use of plastic. Birdie will reward individuals who pledge to make a difference with a reusable tote bag, perfect for stocking up on local produce. More: New Yorkers consume more than 5 billion plastic bags each year. Plastic bags litter our neighborhoods, depletes global natural resources and contribute to carbon emissions and climate change. Littered plastic bags can easily make their way to storm drains and then into our waterways. GreeNYC is the public education arm of PlaNYC, Mayor Bloomberg’s plan for a greener, greater NYC. GreeNYC works to educate, engage, and mobilize New Yorkers to rise to the challenges of reducing their energy use, living a more sustainable lifestyle, and shrinking the citywide carbon footprint--actions that are critical to achieving the overall PlaNYC goal of reducing NYC’s greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030 and improving the quality of the city’s environment. View the event flyer.