The Complexity of Food Waste and NYC Trash
The “New York’s strongest” City Sanitation Bureau is working steadily every day, trying to clean up the mountains of garbage on the streets. The department is well run and its commissioner, Jessica Tisch, is a creative and effective public administrator. But waste management is a political backwater, and no mayor wants to hold a press conference to inaugurate new transfer stations or anaerobic digesters for food waste. As I always say, most people assume that all those green bags are somehow magically transported to solid waste heaven. They do not wish to have any type of waste management facility near their home.
In order to be environmentally sustainable, we ultimately need to use most of what we now call waste as raw materials for new products. The implementation of a circular economy – where all materials are reused and nothing goes to waste – is critical to the future of our species and our planet. Recycling is a cornerstone on the road to a circular economy, but important as a first step, it is deeply flawed as a long-term solution. As a first step, it educates the public about waste and its potential reuse, and can reduce the amount of waste dumped in our landfills. But the problem is that recycling rates in the U.S. tend to be low, and there is an unstable market for the waste we recycle. The long-term answer is an automated waste management system that uses artificial intelligence and automation to sort waste and extract resources from it. The technology is being developed, but the money to pay for these facilities and the political noise that must be dealt with make waste extraction a long-term solution. The idea is that part of the capital cost of a waste treatment facility can be recovered by generating a revenue stream from resources extracted from the waste stream. It would also require an organizational effort to sell the waste product, possibly a private company with experience in mining and selling raw materials. The health sector is not known for expertise in sales and marketing.
In the short term, we need to develop the capacity to collect and treat the forms of waste that are most easily separated from the waste stream. Materials such as paper and bottles have been separated from mixed waste with some success. A few weeks ago, the New York City Council enacted mandatory residential food take-backs. June 8, marianne simmons As reported in City Limits:
“New York City Council on Thursday passed long-awaited ‘zero waste’ legislative package that would expand food waste collection citywide and require all residential buildings to participate by fall 2024. Instead of being dumped in A landfill, the act requires organic waste to be reused for environmentally friendly purposes. This includes composting, which is the process of recycling organic material to reuse it as soil and plant fertilizer, and treating waste to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions alternative form of electricity.Food waste releases 20% of New York City’s total greenhouse gas emissions, making it a third biggest Contributors behind construction (35%) and transportation (21%). “
It’s unclear if the mayor will sign the bill, but if he does, three questions remain:
- How is authorization performed?
- Where do we get the money for the extra weekly garbage collection?
- Where does food waste go?
The enforcement issue concerns the fact that 70 percent of New Yorkers live in multifamily housing, where often one apartment’s trash is mixed with that of other apartments. It’s true that most of the land in New York City is under single-family homes, but most people in New York live in apartments. The second question is how will cash-strapped cities afford separate city-wide food waste collections? The third problem is that, if the mandate is in effect, our district’s capacity to process food waste in anaerobic digesters or compost piles will be overwhelmed. If we’re really serious about food waste, we’re going to need to build a lot of anaerobic digesters. It doesn’t make sense to have a system that requires us to ship unprocessed food waste thousands of miles away from cities. Instead, we need to build regional anaerobic digesters to treat the waste.according to Environmental Protection Agency:
“Anaerobic digestion is the process by which bacteria break down organic matter such as animal manure, wastewater biosolids, and food waste in the absence of oxygen. Anaerobic digestion for biogas production takes place in sealed vessels called reactors whose Design and construction come in all shapes and sizes, depending on site and material conditions (Learn more about AD system design and technology). These reactors contain complex communities of microorganisms that break down (or digest) waste and produce biogas and digestate (the solid and liquid material end products of the anaerobic digestion process), which are discharged from the digester. “
The digesters produce fuel and fertilizer, and can be scaled up to the size needed to handle the vast amount of food waste New York generates. However, as mentioned above, the organizational capacity for collection and processing is not the same as that required to sell a recycling plant’s product. New York should get creative and come up with a way to generate income from food waste. While avoiding landfill dump fees is a great way to save money, the bulk of those savings will need to be spent collecting and disposing of food waste. The next step will be to sell recycled products to help pay for the waste management system.
The good news about New York’s new law is that the impact of mandatory food recycling is likely to be the same as voluntary, so the city’s meager food reprocessing capacity will likely meet the demand created by the initial food waste stream. New York’s record on food waste recycling has thus far not been stellar. In the apartment building I lived in, we used to have brown and orange airtight containers for food waste, which helped train residents to sort food waste while reducing rat populations.These early efforts are working, but as i observed Back in 2021:
“At the height of the Covid crisis, Bill DeBlasio put on hold a very promising food waste recycling program that has reached 500,000 city residents. When budgets are tight, recycling is a Easy target.”
The really sad part of de Blasio’s actions is that the amount of residential food waste has skyrocketed at the same time the city ended its residential food recycling program due to restaurant closures and increased takeout dining.
As for the new mandatory food waste recycling included in the city council bill, the order is relatively harmless if not enforced diligently. While I think voluntary programs make more sense, missions do convey seriousness of purpose. The problem with enforcement is that the only places it works are single-family homes, and it’s not hard to imagine a negative political reaction to ill-targeted and arbitrary enforcement efforts.Another issue missing from council bill is recycling Non-domestic food waste collected by the Environmental Sanitation Department. And over the past decade, New York City’s large restaurants, stadiums, catering operations, food retailers and wholesalers have all been required to comply Local Law No. 146 of 2013 In order to separate their organic waste and have it collected by private recyclers, the new law ignores nonprofits that collect waste by the health department: what happens to their food waste? New York City’s waste management system is complex, and food waste recycling requirements add to the complexity.
Despite these design issues, the goal of repurposing food waste is worthwhile. The staggering amount of food we waste is truly a product of our fast-paced lifestyles and unbelievably large amounts of food. In more traditional societies, very little food is thrown away. In my grandparents’ generation, every part of the chicken was cooked and some parts ended up in soups or stews. At that time, people eat almost all the food they are fed and save what they can’t finish for another meal. These traditions continue in many parts of the world. In New York City, vast amounts of uneaten food are not being thrown away, but are being repurposed as food for those in need. When food is not consumed, it should be reprocessed into fertilizer or fuel. This is the aim of the City Council’s new food waste law, in both its current and revised form, to be enacted, signed and implemented as soon as possible.
