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NYC officials, environmentalists urge locals to compost Thanksgiving leftovers
By
Sophia Chang
Published Nov 23, 2022
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By
Sophia Chang
Published Nov 23, 2022
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With more composting options available this year, city officials and environmentalists are urging New Yorkers to compost their Thanksgiving leftovers instead of tossing them in the trash.
The volume of trash in New York City surges each year during the week after Thanksgiving as weary diners ditch their leftovers, making it one of the busiest times of the year for garbage collectors.
Last November, the city's Department of Sanitation picked up 51,510 tons of trash per week, according to the department. That figure dipped to 48,952 tons during the week of Thanksgiving — but grew to 54,248 tons of refuse the following week as people returned from their holiday travels or threw out leftovers crammed into their refrigerators.
Vincent Gragnani, a spokesperson for the sanitation department, said there’s hope for less of a post-Thanksgiving purge this year, thanks in part to the recent expansion of the city’s compost pickup program to all of Queens.
A boost in composting in the city could have major environmental benefits to New Jersey residents, said Marisa DeDominicis, executive director of the advocacy group Earth Matter, which promotes community composting. That’s because much of the city’s garbage — including food scraps thrown in the trash — is incinerated in New Jersey.
“Food scraps that are not getting composted in New York City are really at the detriment of other people that we don’t want to think about,” said DeDominicis. “If people could come in touch with that, and if they could realize that their actions really do have a negative impact… I think more people would compost.”
Here are the composting options for New York City residents, which vary by neighborhood:
For New Yorkers with curbside pickup
For residents of Queens and seven areas in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan where the city offers curbside compost pickup, all organic waste should go into either the brown bins provided by the sanitation department or into dedicated bins labeled as compost. And that includes turkey bones.
“We remind those who receive our curbside composting service that we accept all forms of food waste, including meat and dairy, as well as food-soiled paper,” said Gragnani. “So yes, that turkey carcass can go right into the brown bin with any leftover bits of stuffing or green bean casserole that go uneaten in the days following the holiday.”
For everyone else
But there are other options for residents of other neighborhoods who want to keep their Thanksgiving scraps out of the landfill, like the city’s new “Smart Bins” in Astoria and Lower Manhattan that take all food waste, including turkey bones and other meat scraps.
There are also around 200 community compost drop-off sites, including the GrowNYC sites often found at farmers markets around the city.
Justin Green, head of the environmental nonprofit Big Reuse, said the organizers of community gardens are often eager to take compost and food scraps.
Check if the composting site will accept meat scraps
However, most community composting groups won’t take leftover Thanksgiving turkeys because they don’t have the right equipment to handle meat and bone scraps, said Christine Datz-Romero, executive director of the LES Ecology Center, which runs 20 compost drop-off sites.
“A lot of the locations that collect food scraps are just not set up to handle those materials. You really need a very robust technology to handle it. And so many places are not equipped to do that,” said Datz-Romero. “You really don't want to attract rodents and other critters to your pile and the likelihood of you doing that just really increases by adding meat products.”
Separate out non-organic trash
If a composting site does take meat and bones, sanitation officials said it’s still crucial to ensure no non-organic waste makes its way into compost bins. That includes plastic turkey wrappers and bags of giblets.
DeDominicis said she keeps a separate metal bin in her kitchen to collect her family’s food scraps. “I think the main thing is just to come up with the simple solutions, such as putting your scraps in a freezer so they don't start to be smelly,” she said.
Consider making less food
Datz-Romero said composting should be the final option to help reduce waste on Thanksgiving, calling it a “back-end” solution. She suggested New Yorkers try “to plan for really enough food for everybody to enjoy, without having necessarily too much left over” instead of throwing away mountains of mashed potatoes and stuffing.
Sanitation officials agreed, pointing to the roughly 8 million pounds of food waste and other organic material New Yorkers throw in the trash each day, which makes up about a third of the city’s residential waste.
Reducing consumption to start with would help cut down on waste as well, said Gragnani.
“Most importantly, we hope that New Yorkers do not waste food this holiday season. Enjoy your leftovers and, if you find you’ve bought too many groceries, consider donating some to a food bank,” he said.
Sophia Chang
Sophia Chang is a former WNYC and Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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