Why New York’s Curbside Composting Program Will Yield Hardly Any Compost

By Jake Bolster

Moving to New York can be a culture shock. When Liz French decamped from Indiana to Long Island City, Queens, in 1989—well before it was a trendy place to live—she was sad to learn she’d lost access to a beloved childhood ritual: composting. Her parents, “kind of hippies,” had introduced her to the practice growing up in Bloomfield, Indiana, but, in the Big Apple, there was no gardening “or any sort of composting,” she said. Back then Long Island City was, even for New York, very much an industrial environment.