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To our Community Composters,
NYC’s curbside composting was cut due to COVID-19 budget cuts. Community composting sites stepped up to fill the loss. Now, when our city needs community composting the most, NYC Parks Department is refusing to renew the license agreements with community composting sites. Big Reuse’s license for our community composting site under the Queensboro Bridge ends December 31st, 2020.
We are asking for your support to appeal to Mayor DeBlasio and Parks Commissioner Silver to renew the license for the Big Reuse Queensboro Bridge community composting site.
Big Reuse's site is one of the largest community composting sites in NYC -- composting 1.5 million pounds of organic waste annually including 300,000 lbs of leaf and yard waste mostly from Parks. We give the compost back to Parks, community gardens and street tree care. All of this organic material including Parks leaf and yard waste would otherwise be landfilled. Our efforts are an essential to NYC City Council's effort to retain some composting during a budget crisis. Our site is recognized nationally as a model for local composting.
NYC Parks has rejected community composting on Parks land for a few reasons:
1. Alienation of Public Land. Parks' legal concern is composting on Parks' land is an alienation of public land that is required to be used for leisure or the operations that maintain opportunities for leisure. Our site does that by composting parks leaf and yard waste and providing compost to improve green spaces throughout the city. Our community composting space is small, volunteer-driven, and based on community involvement with over 1000 volunteers in 2019 - unlike Trump Links which is considered by Parks to be a more acceptable use of Parks land.
2. Park does not have a mandate to compost its waste. As a result, Parks send hundreds of thousands of lbs of organic material to landfills every season that could be composted. Composting is not just Department of Sanitation job - it all of ours.
3. Bringing food scraps to Parks land will be a nuisance to Parks goers. Queensbridge Site is in strictly operational zone for Parks so does not interfere with recreation. And actually we brings many people to our site for compost education and volunteering.
4. Big Reuse license was temporary and is ending. The Parks Department can still renew our license agreement - just like a landlord can decide to evict or renew a lease. They should renew the license agreement to ensure composting continues.
5. Parks need the land for a parking lot for their vehicles. Evicting a composting site for more parking does not make sense during a climate crisis. Also there are 30,000 acres of Parks' land across the city and nearby under the bridge that could be used for parking.
We all know that during a climate crisis that composting food scraps and Parks leaves locally just makes sense instead of landfilling. It reduces our climate impact and helps green NYC. Dozens of community gardens on city owned land across the city have composted for decades. When curbside compost collection ended - those community gardens and volunteers stepped up to collect food scraps for composting in their communities.
Big Reuse supports those community efforts by picking up and composting food scraps dropped off at overwhelmed gardens - in addition to compost dropped off at farmers markets. If we lose our Parks' site - we lose most of that ability to compost locally.
What you can do now:
1) Click here to cut and paste a letter to Mayor DeBlasio's contact form to save Big Reuse's Queensbridge Compost Site.
2) Cut and paste a letter to Parks Commissioner Silver contact form.
3) Also use this action page.
4) Continue to compost for now - DSNY Food Scrap Drop Off Map.
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