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Transcript: From Trash to Treasure: Ahead of Citywide Curbside Composting, Adams Administration Expands Staten Island Compost Facility

January 4, 2024

Commissioner Jessica Tisch, Department of Sanitation: Okay. Thank you all for joining us today at the Department of Sanitation Staten Island Compost Facility where the grass is always greener. We produce tens of millions of pounds of compost per year at this facility.

I want to welcome some people who have joined us today, including Assemblymember Jennifer Rajkumar, Councilmembers Kamillah Hanks and David Carr. Without further ado, I want to turn it over to Mayor Eric Adams for a big announcement about the future of this facility.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thanks so much, commissioner, and really want to thank my colleagues for being here as well. Really excited.

And when you do a real analysis over the last two years with Commissioner Tisch, you just see how she has taken the Department of Sanitation and really improved on the quality of life of New Yorkers. And you know, you just get so excited when you talk about trash, you know?

And it just shows, from the containerization to the enforcement, to the change of hours and now living with our commitment that we made during the State of the City, our administration has always been focused on three goals: one, protecting public safety; revitalizing the economy; and, making our city more livable for hardworking New Yorkers.

This is why last year, in the State of the City speech, I promised we would revolutionize composting in New York City. Many people tried and administrations have failed, but we focused on Queens first. We saw the excellent results, and we wanted to make sure that we have it cascaded throughout our entire city, leaving no borough behind.

And by October this year, every single New Yorker on every block in every borough will have access to hassle‑free curbside composting. It's an amazing achievement that we didn't think we would be able to pull off because of the failures in the past, but we knew we could get it done, and under this commissioner we got it done.

It's clear, getting food out of the trash bags and into the nation's leading citywide composting program is a win for New Yorkers. It pushes back on the rodent problem we're having in the city. We're keeping methane out of our atmosphere and we are putting our food and yard waste to beneficial use to clean our environment. And it's about how do we find smart, productive ways of accomplishing this task.

This expansion at the DSNY Staten Island composting facility will dramatically increase our ability to process compost, and it gets us ready to receive and process more food and yard waste as our composting program expands across all five boroughs.
The technology at this plant gives us the ability to process food waste by 2,000 percent. So, we can turn our food trash into what the commissioner always states, into treasure— treasure that could be used in a productive way. When you focus on the fact that our city produces 24 million pounds of residential waste each day and a third of it— a third of the 24 million— is food waste.

We can now either convert into renewable energy or compost that can be sold to landscapers or given away to parks and communities to continue making our city greener. No more food with rats in bins and plastic bags. Using our food waste for a real win‑win for New Yorkers will produce renewable energy and nutrient‑rich soil in which we can grow trees and plants.

This is a great, great accomplishment. Hats off to Commissioner Tisch and her amazing A Team at the Department of Sanitation, and our partners that are here, Assemblymember Rajkumar, Councilmember Carr and our amazing councilwoman, I'm always skipping that, our Councilwoman Kamillah Hanks here on Staten Island. So, it's a real win‑win. Thank you, good job. Job well done.

Commissioner Tisch: All right. Thank you, Mayor Adams. Good morning, everyone, thank you so much for being here. Every single day New Yorkers throw away eight million pounds of food scraps and yard waste, material that goes from black bags where it attracts rats to landfills where it produces, as the mayor said, methane.

When Mayor Adams came into office, he said enough, enough of feeding the rats, enough of harming the planet. He wanted to think big and far reaching to create a big solution to a really big problem. This administration has already rolled out the largest curbside composting program in the country.

And we're only halfway there. In this calendar year, we are going to make history as every New Yorker begins to receive simple, regular service every week on their recycling day. No signup required, no complicated rules.

This site— the Department Staten Island compost facility— has made hundreds of millions of pounds of compost, and that compost has become flowers and trees at parks and in community gardens and yards across the country… Across the city, excuse me.

Today's ribbon cutting marks an expansion at the capacity at this 33‑acre site. Instead of having to pile up the food waste into large mounds that are turned and repositioned every day for eight months, it will be placed into these aerated static piles that you see around us where air and moisture are blown in from all sides, cutting the processing time down by greater than half.

This means an increase in capacity to process food waste at this site of 2,000 percent, from 60,000 pounds per week to a whopping 1.2 million. It means the total capacity of this site, including both food and yard waste, will now stand at 210 million pounds of material accepted per year. This is a huge part of reaching the real goal behind the curbside composting program, beneficial use.

Look around at this site and understand one thing, that material you set out at the curb for collection is being put to good use. Here, we are turning your trash into treasure. Thank you. I'd like to welcome the assemblymember to give some remarks.

Assemblymember Jennifer Rajkumar: It is a beautiful morning to be here in Staten Island. I'm New York State Assemblywoman Jennifer Rajkumar, and I'm so excited about composting. 
This is an environmental revolution, and composting is all about taking our food scraps and turning it into nutrient‑rich soil. It's about doing that; and in so doing, beautifying our parks, our gardens and our green spaces, and now composting is going to become city wide.

This administration has been able to do what no administration has been able to do and take composting and put it in all five boroughs. So, we are becoming, as New York City, a national model in environmental stewardship.
The mayor hired a genius when he hired Jessica Tisch, and composting started in my home borough of Queens where they initiated a pilot program. And it did one of my favorite things: it initiated an effective, cost‑effective program, and now that's going to go all across the city.

So, I'm so proud to stand here at this historic moment as New York City becomes a national model in environmental stewardship. We are all going to do our part and contribute to the environment by recycling our food scraps, and we're going to show the entire world how to protect the planet. So, thank you, Mayor Adams; and congratulations, Staten Island. 

Commissioner Tisch: Next we are going to hear from the councilmember who represents the district that this site is on— and I want to note it's the site of a former landfill— Councilmember David Carr.

Councilmember David Carr: Thank you, Commissioner Tisch; thank you, mayor, for this great day. I want to acknowledge we've been joined by our minority leader in the council, Joe Borelli.
This is an important day for Staten Island and the city. As the commissioner just noted, we are surrounded and nearby the site of the former Fresh Kills Landfill, which was one of the greatest environmental disasters in the world, in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of generations of borough residents.

And it shows an important thing, which is that landfilling cannot be the answer for all of our solid waste management issues. We're coming up on the renewal of the solid waste management plan for 2025, and this composting program is going to be a key element in how this city handles its waste moving forward for the 20 years that come after the beginning of the new swamp plan.

We need to get what we can out of the mainstream waste stream and find a way to reuse every single bit of it. Conservation and reusing our resources is a bipartisan consensus. We need to make sure that we get the most out of everything that we can as a city.

And so I'm so grateful that this program is now coming to Staten Island, that we're going to see it yield benefits for our borough residents and our city at large. And I thank the mayor and the leadership for making today a reality. Thank you.

Commissioner Tisch: Next, we're going to hear from Councilmember Joe Borelli.

Councilmember Joseph Borelli: Thank you, commissioner. So for those who don't know, when I grew up on Staten Island, I could see the Fresh Kills Landfill from my window, and I was so close that I could actually make out the seagulls and see what they were pecking at.

And in my political career— which is now 10 years or so— it's been really incredible to see the transformation of this site from just the landfill to what we're doing here today with composting; and of course, the transformation of the bulk of the site to become a park.

So, I want to commend the administration for living up to the promises that previous mayors, previous administrations have made, and actually being here at the end to make sure the job has gotten done. So, congratulations to you, mayor, thank you, thank you very much.

And Commissioner Tisch, I have to give her a shout‑out, because she and I have the most obscure text message exchanges under the sun. If you look at our texts… 

Commissioner Tisch: Please don't read them. 

Commissioner Borelli: You will see messages, have you seen the new Rubbermaid 3,000? I'm in Home Depot looking at garbage pails and I'm texting the commissioner telling her what she should look for in trash pails.

But there were some who underestimated her. Let's be honest. I mean, there are some people who said, what does she know about running the Department of Sanitation? And she has outkicked the coverage every single time and done a tremendous job, and she deserves to be commended. So, thank you all for coming. This is a great day for Staten Island.

Commissioner Tisch: Thank you, councilmember. And finally, we are going to hear from Councilmember Kamillah Hanks.

Councilmember Kamillah Hanks: Good morning. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm Councilmember Kamillah Hanks, and everything that I would have said has been said already.
However, see, Joe Borelli says he saw, actually it was called The Dump. See, before there was Wu‑Tang, Staten Island was known for The Dump. So, this is a very, very important step in the reimagining and the rebranding of being a Staten Islander and being on Staten Island, because not only could you see The Dump from, I guess, Councilmember Borelli's, you could see it from space.

And as a world traveler, and I have seen what could be done, what has been done with composting and what we do with our trash all around the world; and finally, due to the great work of our mayor and Commissioner Tisch, we are now on par with that.
And so, thank you so much, this is great. But I also want to thank all the sanitation workers that are here. I know that people don't thank you very much, but I do. And thank you so much for your work and I'm very happy to be here today. Thank you.

Commissioner Tisch: All right. So we are going to cut the ribbon on one of our new aerated static piles and then dump some material into it so it can start to be composted. Oh, sorry. Questions. Sorry about that.

Question: In regards to the budget cuts, I know that it affected composting. Can you talk about that and how this is different from that and how you're able to fund this [inaudible]?

Commissioner Tisch: Sure, in very difficult times, we had to make some difficult choices. I am proud to say that our universal curbside composting program, which will deliver curbside composting to all 3.5 million residences in every borough of this city, is on track to be completed by October of 2024.

So, what we did was we moved the Bronx and Staten Island from going live later this spring to go live with Manhattan in October of 2024. That was one of the cuts. Another cut associated with composting was we unfortunately had to scale back or take the funding from the green markets.

I am very pleased to tell you that private philanthropy has stepped in to keep those very popular green market composting programs running through the end of the fiscal year. There were no budget cuts associated with the processing that we're talking about today in this facility.

Question: So, if people can't compost how helpful will this… 

Commissioner Tisch: I think I just said that people "can" compost, so we have, we produce compost in a number of ways. We have curbside composting service running every week in every address in Brooklyn and Queens. We've put hundreds of orange composting bins in all five boroughs of the city, they're available 24/7 for New Yorkers to drop off their compost there.

We are rolling out composting service at every single public school in the city; that means by the end of this school year, every single public school cafeteria in this city will be composting. We are producing more compost and collecting more material— like more than double last year— than we have ever collected before, and those numbers are only going to grow as the regular weekly composting service expands city wide.

Question: Do you have an estimate of how much you collect right now as far as food waste and yard waste that go to the composting program?

Commissioner Tisch: Yes. This facility is going to be able to compost 210 million pounds.

Question: City wide?

Commissioner Tisch: Yes. So, I have the numbers from the Queens program that we ran. It's still too soon in the larger program to give a good sense of the numbers.

But in the Queens program that we ran when we piloted it—  piloted the regular service— we collected 24 million pounds of material in three months. That was three times more material than had been collected under old programs in the same time period.

Question: Mr. Mayor, I wonder if you could indulge me. In order to come here, I had to come through New Jersey where there are dozens of buses that have been letting migrants off to come into the city. Now, those migrants are not going to be composting, but they are coming into New York City to be your problem. What are you going to do about it?

Mayor Adams: We made it clear that we are going to enforce the EO, the Executive Order. I communicated with the governor of New Jersey last night. We also spoke with the governor of Connecticut, and we're going to continue to reach out to our colleagues in the region to say that everyone should put in place a similar EO to send a loud message that these bus operators and bus companies should not be participating in Governor Abbott's, just a fiasco of really trying to destabilize these cities.

He broadcast what he was going to do, and it is imperative that we ensure that the entire region is going to stand together around this like they did in Chicago.

Question: [Inaudible.]

Mayor Adams: Yes.

Question: From New Jersey? 

Mayor Adams: Right. And what he is doing is just being dogmatic about destabilizing these cities, and we must meet his challenge. And that is what we're going to do. We're going to be steadfast that there needs to be a coordination on how this is done so we don't have the ghost buses, we don't stretch our resources and we don't destabilize our communities.

And that's our goal and that's what we're going to accomplish.

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