Lower Manhattan Pilot Project Wraps, But DSNY Rolls Out New Local Options
The Downtown Alliance is shutting down the network of ten compost bins it installed throughout Lower Manhattan as part of an 18-month pilot program that debuted in 2021, but the City’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is activating 11 new sites at the same time. These units are designed to collect all forms of organic waste, including food scraps, food-soiled paper, and house plants.
The Alliance’s trial program was the first in the nation to utilize mobile technology for secured access, which made drop-off composting available to local residents day and night. Since the program’s launch, more than 2,500 local users signed up for the app, and diverted more than 100,000 pounds of organic waste away from landfills.
“The success of this initiative has provided powerful proof for the Department of Sanitation as it launches its City-wide composting program,” said Downtown Alliance president Jessica Lappin. “Our goal from the beginning was to change peoples’ behavior by diverting food waste from our landfills and working towards the City’s zero-waste goal. The stats bear out that we have been impactful.”
As of today (June 28), the Alliance composting bins are being deactivated, but DSNY Smart Composting Bins are coming online at 11 locations (see map, or download the free NYC Compost app for locations). The bins are unlocked by the NYC Compost app, which also advises how much capacity is available in each.
These developments are in addition to a pair composting program operated by the Battery Park City Authority, through which organic scraps can be dropped at either 75 Battery Place or the lower level of the North Esplanade, at Chambers Street and River Terrace. As a result of these efforts, the BPCA has diverted more than 160,000 pounds of food waste from landfills since 2020, creating more than 210,000 pounds of compost in the process. The Authority also operates a dog waste compost program at its community dog runs, intercepting up 25 pounds of dog waste daily.
DSNY statistics indicate that as of March of this year, Community Board 1—representing the neighborhoods bounded by Canal, Baxter, and Pearl Streets, and the Brooklyn Bridge—produces 69.5 tons of garage per day. These totals do not include collections from offices and retail premises, which are handled by private carters, and would likely add much more to the results.
Strikingly, DSNY documents that CB1 produces a negligible amount of “organics” (food waste, leaves, and yard waste) per day. This anomaly (given that the average Manhattan Community Board district produces almost 1,700 pounds of organic waste per day, according to DSNY) likely is attributable, in significant measure, to the parallel composting programs operated by the Downtown Alliance and the BPCA.
In 2019, the Alliance commissioned a study, the “Lower Manhattan Residential Sanitation Resource Guide,” which found considerable room for improvement among local residential buildings: Fewer than 20 percent of Downtown properties were enrolled in at least one or more of the voluntary waste-diversion services (for specialized categories of trash such as compostable organics, clothing, and electronic waste) provided free of charge by DSNY. Even where participation is mandatory, as is the case with recycling, most residential buildings took a low-tech approach, simply piling up this category of waste on sidewalks on the mandated days of the week. For example, the Alliance report noted that in an apartment building with 500 dwellings, a typical yield of recyclables (52 bags and hand-tied bundles containing items such as glass, plastics, and cans) takes up 130 square feet of sidewalk space. But the same amount of material can be compressed into just 16 square feet using inexpensive mechanical baling equipment.
Similar equipment can be used to crush and store the non-recyclable waste that comprises the vast majority of a building’s trash output, and such facilities can be shared between multiple buildings. This is the case in Battery Park City, where four shared compactors handle the combined garbage produced by more than two dozen residential buildings. In a program managed by the BPCA, staff from each of these buildings bring trash to one of the compactors, where is it crushed and stored temporarily, to await pickup by DSNY trucks later that day. In the aggregate, this amounts to several hundred tons of trash each month that is never deposited on local streets. Another effect is that fewer garbage trucks are needed to service the community, and those that are deployed to Battery Park City spend less time on its streets.
No similar program exists in the other communities of Lower Manhattan. The Alliance report noted that, “while this is an attractive solution that could dramatically reduce the number of trucks on our streets, it is challenging to implement. Individual properties would have to work together to identify a suitable location and determine how to equitably share the costs (both upfront and ongoing) of this solution. Additionally, a building would need sufficient loading dock space to house the compactor and allow for a DSNY collection vehicle to enter and pick up the compacted waste.”
The Alliance endorsed several other policy recommendations, including more frequent DSNY collection, creating real-time collection alerts to enable building managers to “meet the truck,” and implementing incentives for new residential developments to incorporate waste infrastructure into their plans.
The Alliance has hands-on experience in keeping the community clean: for nearly 30 years, the organization has been picking up litter, removing graffiti, and shoveling snow in public areas across Lower Manhattan. Every 12 months, the Alliance bags nearly 1,500 tons of public trash and collects 250 tons of public recyclables. In 2012, the Alliance launched a pilot program that put garbage and recycling bins (which doubled as solar-powered compactors) onto local streets. There are now more than 150 of these Big Belly units throughout Lower Manhattan, collecting many hundreds of tons of refuse each year.