NYC Compost Program Issues Arise

Nabeel Chavdary lives in a studio apartment in lower Manhattan, where his kitchen is a short, narrow inlet tucked between his bathroom and living space. With only room for a single garbage bin, he said he doesn’t have space to collect compost.

While he admitted he chooses not to compost, he said he hasn’t heard any complaints from the city or his property manager.

"I'm a renter, so I'm not the one who's kind of responsible for it." he said.

After launching the program across Queens in 2022 and Brooklyn the following year, mandatory curbside composting collection made its way to the remaining boroughs in October 2024. The program requires residents and property managers to separate food scraps from their other waste. During the program’s first summer, frustration among residents and property owners is heating up.

Manhattan resident Jeff Fagan said he’s been composting, but he’s struggled to add it to his daily routine.

“I'm not happy about it, but I started when they told us that we had to start,” he said.

Fagan lives in a one-bedroom apartment with his partner. He said the program is not just a new expense for the city, it’s an expense for residents too.

"We have to do the paper, we have to do the plastic, and now we have to do composting," he said. "I've got three different bins, other than the garbage and New York City, like you don't have much space.”

Residents are not the only ones finding it difficult to adjust. Thomas Mastrangelo is a property manager for more than 20 residential buildings across the city. He said he views the program as more work for him and the building staff.

“It’s another program, another process, another possible violation for something,” he said.

Mastrangelo said he believes the program was rolled out with good intentions but the city has left residents and building owners to bear the responsibility. He said to avoid fines, his maintenance staff has to sort through the food scraps that residents do not separate.

However, the New York Department of Sanitation said this is nothing new. Joshua Goodman works in Public Affairs and Customer Experience for the DSNY. He said property managers have been handling the separation of reusable materials like paper, glass, and plastic for 25 years.

“This is an additional stream of waste but the volume of the waste does not change, right?” Goodman said. It's not as if they're suddenly carrying out more of it.”

Property manager Mastrangelo disagrees with Goodman’s logic.

“I think having to pick through someone's coffee grinds and soiled pizza oil is different than going through a bunch of Poland Spring bottles and like Snapple bottles and metal and cans.” said Mastrangelo.

The Department of Sanitation issued 3,500 citations in the first week of the program in April. Since then, the city has put fines on hold for most residential buildings and is refocused on educating residents about composting.

DSNY employee Joshua Goodman says New Yorkers stand to benefit most from the program.

“This isn't a favor you do for us, " Goodman said “This is a service we offer to you just like any other.”

The city regularly collects five million pounds of compostable material each week, said Goodman. That material is then broken down and distributed to NYC Parks or even given back to residents as fertilizer.

However, residents like Fagan remain skeptical that the collection process is worth the result.

“The city is just filthy and yet this is just one more thing to add filth to the city,” he said, saying that he's even stopped using coffee grounds because they were too difficult to compost and they made his apartment smell.

The DSNY currently picks up food scraps from compost bins just once per week. Limited space in homes and on the street exacerbate other city issues like cleanliness, Mastrangelo explained.

“You don't want that outside all the time, especially in the summer heat,” he said.

But when it comes to ways to improve the program, the compost-resistant Fagan said that other than eliminating the program, he didn't have a ready solution.

Joshua Goodman from the DSNY said they received a $2 million grant from the EPA to continue educating residents about the composting requirement, explaining that they were resuming building citations for waste violations in 2026.

[Correction 8/25/25: An earlier version of this article cited October as when 3500 fines were issued by the Department of Sanitation. That has been amended to April per the DSNY.]

This interview ran on the What's What Podcast on August 18, 2025.