NYC Brown Bin Composting Info Page

NYC Curbside Composting Info Page Brown Bins or Sanitized Green Buckets?

Curbside Composting service is relaunching following its COVID-related suspension. Differently than before, buildings must sign up with the New York City Department of Sanitation’s service and that building’s service will be restarted/rolled out as their neighborhood reaches a critical mass of commitment and routes in the area are established.

What is NYC Curbside Composting Service?

Overview: NYC Brown Bin Department of Sanitation Residential Curbside Food Waste Program

The New York City Department of Sanitation’s Curbside Composting is a program where residents dump their food scraps into a central Brown Bin commonly located in the buildings trash area. The city then picks up the organics and composts a small percentage of the waste locally (for parks and gardens) or trucks the vast majority faraway (to places like Virginia, Ohio & Vermont) to be either composted or converted to fuel to be incinerated.

What is Vokashi NYC Composting Service?

Overview: Vokashi NYC Sanitized Green Bucket Residential Food Scrap Collection Service

Vokashi is a great way to manage your food scraps, cleanly, through fermentation and accepts all food waste (the same as the City does). Whether you are looking for a way to kickstart local composting to gauge building-wide acceptance or are not happy with the Brown Bins, folks are bound to like Vokashi, and if you build widespread acceptance/compliance then, you might want to proceed/return to Brown Bins. Though, many are opting to stay with our white glove service, a worker cooperative that composts 100% of your organics locally resulting in a phenomenally lower carbon footprint.

The Benefits of Composting

Why composting is important for your household and building

NYC Curbside Composting versus Vokashi

Composting Pickup Service Benefits/Differences

Top 10

7 More

NYC Curbside (Brown Bins):

Vokashi (Green Buckets):

Has central bin in building?

Yes, Brown Bin

Not needed

Has sanitized buckets for each household?

No, buy/clean your own

Yes

How many households to start?

Neighborhood critical mass

Is there a waiting or lead-time to setup?

Yes, rolling out by community board and wait can be months

No, setup within a few days

Bin/bucket needs plastic liner?

Yes, plastic liner highly recommended

Never needed

Fermentation process kickstarts cleanliness?

No, rotting process begins instead

Yes

Accepts all foods?

Yes

Has airtight lid to prevent bad odors, fruit flies and other pests?

No, bad odors in central Brown Bin area and pests may be a challenge to avoid

Yes, airtight lid eliminates pests and no bad odors due to fermentation

Who pays for pickup?

Paid for by Sanitation tax dollars

Households pay ~$20-48/mo.

Is training and service support provided?

Training not an option, call 311, for service, some delay (bin replacement 6-8 weeks, etc.)

We’re happy to provide onsite service: call/text/email your rep for immediate attention

NYC Curbside (Brown Bins):

Vokashi (Green Buckets):

Frees up freezer?

Possibly, but transfers pest/ odor issues to Brown Bin

Yes

Is additional training/work needed for building staff?

Yes, likely building staff will need to attend to Brown Bin related issues and logistics

No, on pickup day (for a multiunit site) households drop-off sealed buckets to out of way place (like loading dock) and we swap with sanitized buckets and folks retrieve those that day

Has Farm-to-Table Food drop-off and Compost pickup?

No, but there are Greenmarkets (great effort!)

Soon, Farm-to-Table plan rolling out in Brooklyn and Queens!

Is service widespread and not subject to suspension?

Only in a few places, COVID suspension was for more than a year

Serve all of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx; was some COVID delay ~1 month

Compost produced used for city benefit/ public purposes?

Sometimes, usually a commodity owned by far away private enterprises.

Always! Compost used to offset fertilizer need at city owned golf course!

Composted locally?

Rarely, often trucked far away to places like Virginia, Ohio & Vermont

All in the city!

Waste can be converted to fuel and incinerated?

Yes, part of the “Composting” program

Never! Maintains Bio-cycle!

Local (like Vokashi) vs. NYC Curbside Brown Bin Service FAQ

Is this free or another tax?

We support citywide composting where food waste is diverted from landfills and composted locally; where all those costs are born by the municipality. Until these services are available citywide we think that Vokashi’s “Clean, Green Buckets” are an excellent option, at a modest cost born by the consumer. We’d like to see Sanitation fund Vokashi handing the waste locally rather than spending $425 million per year to truck it far away (for composting or for fuel generation).

What are the benefits of handling food waste 100% (or even predominantly) locally?

The benefits are a greatly reduced carbon footprint, local jobs kickstarting the green economy, and environmental justice/responsibility. While we applaud every effort to actually compost, admittedly, a preponderance Department of Sanitation “managed” waste is still trucked-off to far flung places, like Virginia, Ohio & Vermont. It’s a start though, many NYC residents, Vokashi and Sanitation all want to see a greater shift to locally stewarded organic waste.

I see that Sanitation may turn my food waste in to energy, is there a downside?

Waste needs to be reduced and diverted in ways that build up our ecosystems and keeping organics in the food-and-soil cycle is THE best practice. Just because we can turn your organics into fuel–and perhaps, that’s sounds better than petroleum powered city run electric plants–it doesn’t mean that we should vaporize the earth’s precious organics. Power needs to be CONVERTED from other naturally existing power sources (such as solar and wind) not DERIVED from ANY HANDY SOURCE such as the soil-food-web that took millennia to establish.

References:

1. [25 LBS. OF FOOD WASTE CALCULATED- Vokashi internal metrics and EPA (25% less) Food waste, gallon : pounds = 1 : 3.8 * 5 gallons = 19 lbs.] EPA, Volume-to-Weight Conversion Factors

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery April 2016.

www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-04/documents/volume_to_weight_conversion_factors_memorandum_04192016_508fnl.pdf

Goldstein, Nora. “Food Scraps Composting Laboratory”. BioCycle. January 2013, Vol. 54, No. 1, p. 33.

www.biocycle.net/2013/01/22/food-scraps-composting-laboratory/

2. [FINISHED COMPOST CALCULATED- Food waste : Finished Compost 1 : 0.5875 * 25 lbs. = 14.7 lbs.]

U.S. Composting Industry Metrics July 23, 2021.

www.biocycle.net/u-s-composting-industry-metrics/

3. [1.3 LB. OF CO₂ CARBON DIOXIDE SEQUESTRATION CALCULATED: 333,839 * 1.28205 (full utilization 1/.78) = 427,998 Metric Tons CO₂ / 4,700,000 Metric Tons of compost = Ratio of (Compost : CO₂) 1 : .091. 14.7 lbs. * .091 = 1.34 lb. of CO₂ per 5 gallon bucket of Food Waste]

U.S. Composting Industry Metrics July 23, 2021.

www.biocycle.net/u-s-composting-industry-metrics/

[Alternate method/calculation source: 1.6 lbs. CARBON REDUCED BY REPLACING FERTILIZER CALCULATED: the ratio of total emission of 3.6 kg CO₂-equivalent per kg N for fertilizers that use ammonium nitrate as the nitrogen source(a) = Ratio 3.6 : 1 ( CO₂ : Nitrogen Fertilizer). 0.108 Nitrogen (3% Nitrogen^b/lb. of compost * 14.7 lbs. compost / bucket) = 1.5876 lbs. CO₂ per Vokashi Bucket]

(a)Yara International ASA, Fertilizer life cycle perspective

www.yara.com/crop-nutrition/why-fertilizer/environment/fertilizer-life-cycle/

(b)Vokashi analysis; ScienceDirect Composts 2008

www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/composts

4. [AGE OF WHAT KIND OF TREE IN CO₂ REMOVED FROM ATMOSPHERE CALCULATED- 1 Vokashi 5 Gallon Bucket / mo. = a 57 year old oak tree. Equivalent : 20.4 pounds CO₂ per year. Or, a 53 year old Douglas Fir Tree. CARBON CALCULATOR, calculate how much carbon a tree captures

treeplantation.com/tree-carbon-calculator.html

[HEIGHT OF A DOUGLAS FIR BY AGE] HEIGHT-AGE CURVES FOR PLANTED STANDS OF DOUGLAS FIR, WITH ADJUSTMENTS FOR DENSITY

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552.8980&rep=rep1&type=pdf

5. [Assumptions: DIVERTED FROM ATMOSPHERE BY COMPOSTING LOCALLY/CARBON SAVED BY NOT COMPOSTING VIA NYC DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION: (0.05 * 13 mi. (NYC) = 0.65 mi.) + (0.95 * 1/3 * 75 mi. (NYS) = 4.1 mi.) + (0.95 * 2/3 * 432.3 (Average distance OH, VT, VA) = 273.74) = 278.5 mi. average Sanitation Food Waste trucking distance] Sanitation doesn’t share exactly where its food waste is sent so we’ll take the data we have and attempt to make a conservative assessment: We assumed that 5% is composted within the city limits (and only travels 13 miles) and of the rest 1/3 only travels on average 75 miles within NYS; the rest will be the average distance to three other know states: NYC to Vermont (348.7 mi) via I-91 N, Virginia (411.3 mi) via I-95 S, Ohio (536.7 mi) via I-80 W. Next, we derive a ratio of based on that mileage (transporting Food Waste : Carbon into the Atmosphere) = 1 : 0.013 and finally, we calculate: 25 lbs. Food Waste 25 * 0.013 = 0.33 lbs. CO₂ diverted by using Vokashi over NYC Department of Sanitation.

Further, that equates to an added 25% additional CO₂ diverted by using Vokashi over NYC Department of Sanitation: 0.33 / 1.34 = 0.246268656716418 * 100 = 24.6%.

Shipping with CN, Carbon Calculator 1000 tones * 278.5 mi.

www.cn.ca/en/delivering-responsibly/environment/emissions/carbon-calculator/

6. [Assumptive calculation: Each Bucket Diverts 1.7 lbs. of₂from the atmosphere! Carbon Dioxide sequestration calculated 1.5876 lbs. CO₂³ + 0.33 lb. CO₂ from the atmosphere!⁵ = 1.67 lbs. That’s 20.4 pounds of CO₂ per year (1.67 lb. CO₂ * 12 months.)

7. Pay Dirt, Composting in Maryland to Reduce Waste, Create Jobs, & Protect the Bay By Brenda Platt, Bobby Bell, and Cameron Harsh Institute for Local Self-Reliance May 2013

www.ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ILSR-Pay-Dirt-Report-05-11-13.pdf