New York City is temporarily easing up on some composting fines after residents, landlords and building managers complained that the city’s new mandatory composting program has caused confusion almost as quickly as it has collected food scraps.
The city is not ending the program. Composting remains mandatory citywide. But officials are pausing fines for smaller buildings with 30 units or fewer until the end of 2025, while lowering some penalties for larger buildings. The Adams administration says the goal is to spend the rest of the year educating people on how the system works before full enforcement resumes.
The change comes after New York began enforcing its citywide composting requirement earlier this year. The rule requires residents to separate food scraps, yard waste and food-soiled paper from regular garbage. That means items such as fruit peels, coffee grounds, meat, bones, dairy, cooked leftovers, greasy pizza boxes, paper plates and yard clippings are supposed to go into compost bins instead of trash bags.
The city says items such as pet waste, diapers, medical waste, hygiene products and plastic packaging do not belong in compost.
For smaller buildings, the fines are now paused through the end of the year. For larger buildings, enforcement will focus more on repeated noncompliance rather than one-time mistakes. Buildings with more than 30 units can still be fined, but the penalty for repeated violations has been reduced from $300 to $100 after multiple warnings.
City officials say the pause is not a retreat from composting, but a reset after a rocky rollout. Many residents were unsure which bin to use, what counted as compostable, and whether landlords or tenants would be held responsible when trash was sorted incorrectly.
That confusion is not unusual. Composting sounds simple, but citywide composting is a major logistical operation.
At the household level, the system starts with residents separating organic waste from regular garbage. Food scraps and yard waste go into a labeled bin, usually with a tight lid to control odors and pests. Sanitation crews then collect that material separately from regular trash.
From there, the waste can follow a few different paths. Some of it is sent to industrial composting facilities, where it is mixed with yard waste, wood chips or other carbon-rich material. The pile is managed for air, moisture and heat. Microbes break the material down in an oxygen-rich process, eventually turning it into dark, nutrient-rich compost that can be used in parks, gardens, farms, landscaping and soil restoration.
Some organic waste can also be processed through anaerobic digestion, a system that breaks down food scraps in sealed tanks. That process can produce biogas, which can be captured and used as energy, while the leftover material can still be processed into a soil product.
The basic point is this: food waste rotting in a landfill is a problem. Food waste breaking down in a managed composting system is a resource.
In a landfill, organic material is buried under layers of trash without much oxygen. That causes it to break down anaerobically, producing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. NASA notes that decomposing landfill waste is one of the major human-related sources of methane emissions. Composting helps avoid that by keeping organic waste out of landfills and breaking it down in a more controlled way. NASA
The benefits go beyond climate arguments. Finished compost improves soil structure, helps soil hold moisture, reduces erosion and can cut the need for chemical fertilizers. The Associated Press has noted that composting reduces pressure on landfill space while producing a useful soil amendment that helps retain water and improve soil health. Associated Press
New York is not inventing the idea. Other major cities have been doing versions of this for years.
San Francisco is often cited as the national model. The city began building its food-scrap collection system through restaurants and businesses, then made composting mandatory for residents in 2009. The EPA has described San Francisco’s program as the first and largest urban food-scraps composting collection program in the United States, serving nearly every type of waste generator and turning collected material into compost used by farmers, orchards and vineyards. EPA
Seattle and Portland have also built well-known municipal composting systems, requiring residents to separate food scraps and yard waste from garbage. Denver and other cities have expanded organics collection as well, as more municipalities try to reduce landfill use and capture value from material that used to be treated as garbage. FoodPrint
Supporters say large-scale composting is one of the most practical environmental programs a city can run. It does not require people to buy new technology or make a dramatic lifestyle change. It asks them to put banana peels, eggshells, coffee grounds and leftovers into a different bin. Done across millions of people, that small habit can divert enormous amounts of material from landfills.
There are also practical city benefits. Less food waste in ordinary trash can mean fewer leaking garbage bags, fewer odors and fewer pests. In New York, where rats are practically a municipal institution, officials have tied containerized trash and composting programs to broader efforts to clean up sidewalks and reduce easy food sources for vermin.
But the program only works if residents understand it and buildings can manage it. That is where New York has run into trouble. Property owners have complained that they can be fined for mistakes made by tenants. Residents have complained that rules are unclear. Others object to being fined over trash sorting at all.
Councilmember Shahana Hanif, who sponsored the composting legislation, has warned that pausing fines raises questions about the program’s long-term future if the city does not provide a clear path forward. The mayor’s office, meanwhile, insists the mandate remains in place and says outreach will continue.
For now, New York is trying to strike a balance: keep composting mandatory, but give people more time to learn the rules before hitting them with heavier fines.
The city’s challenge is obvious. A composting program only succeeds when millions of small decisions happen correctly every day, in apartments, kitchens, hallways, trash rooms and curbside bins. If New Yorkers buy in, the city can turn a major share of its food waste into soil, energy and cleaner streets. If they do not, the program becomes just another confusing city mandate with tickets attached.
The pause on fines gives New York one more chance to make the case that composting is not just another bureaucratic nuisance. It is an attempt to take something cities produce by the ton every day and stop treating it like garbage.
