By Michael V. Cusenza
City Councilman Jim Gennaro (D-Jamaica) on Tuesday blasted the City’s rollout of composting enforcement.
Composting became mandatory on April 1. All City residents are now required to separate food scraps, food-soiled paper, or yard waste from trash, according to the City Department of Sanitation.
Photo Courtesy of Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
Gennaro has called on Mayor Adams to press pause on composting enforcement.
“Many of my constituents are learning for the first time that the Department of Sanitation has just begun enforcing fines for not composting. That does not surprise me given the disastrous rollout of DSNY’s composting program,” said Gennaro, chairman of the Council Committee on Environmental Protection, Resiliency & Waterfronts. “Despite having made the announcement six months ago, there has been virtually no outreach or proper education campaign leading up to a change of this magnitude. Leave it to Mayor Adams and this administration to take a good idea like composting and turn it into complete garbage. To add insult to injury, the rollout was poorly timed and completely thoughtless. New Yorkers have just had to deal with the headache purchasing new NYC bins, only to be slapped with yet a new requirement just months later. What’s more is that, in the coming weeks, millions of New Yorkers will be celebrating Passover and Easter with lots of food. They will now have the added burden of figuring out how to sort their trash when there has been no real effort to educate the public. It’s like the blind leading the blind, and this is clearly not the right time for implementation of fines. I call on Mayor Adams and Acting [DSNY] Commissioner Javier Lojan to put a pause on enforcement until the critical flaws of this program are addressed.”
