Politics & Government

Lander: Composting Comes to Windsor Terrace

Fertilizer will go to parks, schoolyards.

Get your banana peels, eggshells and coffee grinds out of the trash.

Windsor Terrace will be the first neighborhood in New York City to run a pilot composting program run by the city's sanitation department, Park Slope City Councilman Brad Lander announced this week.

Under the new pilot program, which will run for two years, neighborhood locals would leave any organic waste such as food scraps, food-soiled paper and yard trimmings on the curb for city pickup, and the sanitation department will compost the waste to make fertilizer for community gardens, school yards and parks.

According to Lander, the city normally exports biodegradable waste, costing NYC cash it could otherwise save.

Here are a few items Lander shared on his website about the program:

  • Residential buildings will receive a free starter kit from the NYC Department of Sanitation (DSNY) with a brown bin and a small kitchen container (which you can keep on the countertop, in the freezer, etc). Starter kits will be delivered starting September 27.
  • Food scraps can be put in the kitchen container, and then emptied into the brown bin along with leaves and yard trimmings for curbside collection.
  • Sanitation will reach out to larger buildings to determine the appropriate number of brown bins needed.
  • The brown bins Sanitation provides are specially designed to keep rodents and raccoons out.
  • Organic waste pick-up is on your normal recycling day (see map below).
  • For more information, visit nyc.gov/organics or call the Composting Hotline: 212-437-4646.



Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here