New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants to make it mandatory for people to separate their leaf and yard waste, according to a proposed change to city rules published Monday morning.
If the new rule goes into effect, residents and property owners who fail to compost their yard waste would face similar fines to those who don’t recycle properly.
“Yard waste is the right place to start because it’s something New Yorkers already naturally separate,” sanitation commissioner Jessica Tisch told the New York Times, which first reported on the mayor's proposal. “There’s no real behavioral change required, and I think you have to ease into these mandates.”
The proposed change comes as a planned expansion of the city’s voluntary curbside composting program kicks off this week. Adams has promised residents all over the city will have the service by October 2024, with a rollout coming to Brooklyn by this fall. The service will extend to the Bronx and Staten Island next spring, and to Manhattan by fall of next year.
The proposal to make composting yard scraps mandatory would follow a similar timeline if enacted, going into effect right away in Queens, with the requirement phasing in later this year in Brooklyn, and the remaining boroughs next year.
A public hearing is slated for April 27 to discuss the change.
Environmental advocates and city officials tout curbside composting as having the dual benefit of reducing rat infestations and curbing the amount of greenhouse-gas-producing waste the city sends to landfills.
The latest announcement follows decades of fits and starts in attempts to scale up composting across the city.
The city first started piloting curbside compost in 1991 and underwent several pilot programs to collect yard waste in the mid-2000’s. Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched another curbside composting pilot in 2013, and Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to bring the initiative citywide by the end of 2018. But by summer of that year, the city had halted the expansion of composting into new neighborhoods, and later cut back the number of days a week sanitation workers came to collect it.
