Community documentation of the end of NYC Compost Project and FSDOs

[gil lopez]

Hi fellow composters,

As you all know, the NYC compost Project has been defunded and the last Food Scrap Drop-Offs (FSDOs) have already passed at some locations and this weekend will be the last drop-off at many more locations. 

If you and your group have the capacity, please consider documenting and sharing reactions of your participants at the last FSDOs in the coming days/weeks.

We are writing today to any group hosting these community supported FSDOs to encourage you to get out during your final FSDO and record short interviews with people about their thoughts, reactions and questions around this budget cut and loss of City funded community services. As a counterpoint, we are also interested in hearing from people about their experience receiving locally produced compost during giveback events at your FSDO.

Please bring a video recording device, most phones can make video nowadays, get verbal consent from anyone you record to post to these videos on social media and then please do one or both of these options:

• Post short videos to your social media channels and tag @SaveOurCompost + whatever program supports your FSDO (@BigReuse, @QBGcompost, @EarthMatter, etc.) 
• Please also email these short videos to my colleague Anneleise <z...@bigreuse.org> 

We know lots of people rely on our service to compost their scraps because they don't have Brown Bins or their apartment building does not participate. While some people prefer our services because they want their household scraps to actually be composted. Lots of people have questions about how to compost moving forward or why the NYC Compost Project is ending and so many other thoughts, questions, comments and general upset. 

If you are continuing to process collected scraps on your own, please include video of your groups call for increased volunteer help, let us and the world know your new capacity limits, or any other thoughts your volunteers want to offer during this community documentation effort.

These real human thoughts, emotions and questions are important to understand, humanise and dig deeper into this issue moving forward. 

Thank you all for your service to your respective communities and the earth at large. You are the backbone of community compost. Just as it pained me to ask you all to organize and host these community supported FSDOs in 2018/19, as DSNY withdrew funding for staffed drop-offs and continued the neoliberal movement to make vounteers provide services our tax money should cover. It is not easy for me to once again ask you to increase the amount of work you are putting in. My hope is that this effort will result in future funding and lighten the load for all of us as we move forward.

In SOILidarity,

gil lopez and Anneliese Zausner-Mannes

[celeste mcmickle]

Thank you Gil!

I am, as are the rest of you, completely devastated by this. I owe much of my career and community to community composting and the city will NOT be the same without. 

In solidarity,

Celeste

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Best,

Celeste McMickle

Founder, Celestial Solutions

www.celestial.solutions

646-416-0181

[e b]

I can report from uptown manhattan, where our community compost pickups were cancelled at the last round of budget cuts.

• many food scrappers I talk to are well aware of where their Orange "Smart Bin" scraps are going and do make an effort to drop off with us.They very much want an alternative
  
• I have cautiously put out a brown bin 24/7 on our sidewalk at the beginning of november when our garden stopped having open hours - so far it hasn't been a burden so we are continuing this effort and may soon put out a second bin (the issue is always with the associated garbage can) But at present we are officially closed on the FIDO map until April.
• Advice to other gardens who want to try this - Do a turn have an empty or low compost bin so that dumping brown bins isn't a heavy task - I've actually got some volunteers helping out because its so easy to just tip them in rather than pick them up. Put some leaves or straw in the bottom to keep the muck out of the bottom of the bin.
  
• We made an extra effort to gather as many fall leaves as possible because those are going straight to the landfill from Manhattan
• Will upper Manhattan ever get residential brown bins? Not likely now.
  

There is so much despair right now at my job and neighborhood, community and activism groups with this fake austerity and everything being cut again by the City, State and Feds

EB

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nyc-community-composting/CAJqvuL%2BLda%3DxPqgNhVZfPT7ER5sjCLC7SWb%3DBLhz%2Bh8zQ3Cprw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Howard H]

This article was posted yesterday.  Unfortunately, it says some of the other composting organizations (Queens, Brooklyn and  the New York Botanical Gardens, the LES Ecology Center, Earth Matter NY, Big Reuse, Snug Harbor Cultural Center will still be unfunded.  There is also no mention on the status of "The Master Composter Certificate program".

[Andrea Lieske]

Yes, that is correct Queens, Brooklyn and the New York Botanical Gardens, the LES Ecology Center, Earth Matter NY, Big Reuse, Snug Harbor Cultural Center will still be unfunded. Which means none of the food scraps collected by GrowNYC will be composted through these organizations. Also compost outreach and education like the Master Composting program, composting site tours, workdays, community garden support, school visits, workshops, etc are still unfunded.

Andrea

[Haki Compost Collective]

Thanks Gil,
No words to express all you have done to elevate our knowledge - your work has uplifted our souls and soils and we will not give up.

Best wishes,

Christina and Corinna (Haki Compost Collective volunteers)

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023 at 11:32 AM gil lopez <glop...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Celia Eydeland]

Hi all!

I haven't been active much in this group, but I'm someone who is deeply saddened by the cuts to programs such as Master Composter which I started this year and was eager to continue and learn more about composting , just got an email yesterday about it ending on December 31. Do you all have suggestions for the best way to get plugged into work to preserve our composting in NYC and these valuable education programs? thank you! 

Warmly,

Celia

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[Andrea Lieske]

One way is to continue advocating with the mayor, the DSNY commissioner, and your council member.

Call 311 and ask to leave a message for the Mayor Send a message to the Mayor online Send a message to the DSNY commissioner Share our social media posts Reach out to your council member