Illustration: Pete Gamlen
After many starts and stops, curbside composting has expanded citywide. Now, separating organic waste from landfill trash is mandatory in every borough. And it’s working — the city is capturing 5 million pounds of material per week. There are as many ways to compost as there are ways for food to rot, so Strategist writer and veteran composter Erin Schwartz spoke to six composting experts, policymakers, and home cooks for their tips on navigating the beautiful mess.
➽ “If it was alive before, it can be composted,” says Sandy Nurse, the District 37 councilmember who has been instrumental in shaping the city’s compost policy. That rule applies to food waste like vegetable scraps, meat, and dairy; uncoated paper with food waste on it (paper towels, oily pizza boxes); and yard waste. Don’t compost metal, most plastics, glass, diapers, or pet poop, which can contain parasites and pathogens that could contaminate the rest of the compost.
Illustration: Pete Gamlen
➽ Look for the brown and orange bins. Most people compost through the city or through one of many independent programs (listed on the NYC Community Compost Network website). You can put compost in your building’s 21-gallon “brown bin” (the city also offers 13-gallon bins for smaller homes), which goes out to the curb on recycling day, or drop it off at a sidewalk network of orange “smart bins” (check the NYC Compost app to find one).
➽ Or use your own bin. “You can set out any bin you like between ten and 55 gallons as long as it has a secure lid. Just make it clear it’s the compost bin,” says Department of Sanitation deputy commissioner Joshua Goodman. Label it yourself or print out a decal from the DSNY website.
➽ Clear plastic bags can go in city compost. To prevent bugs, Park Slope homeowner Darren Bloch lines his bin with a clear plastic recycling bag and says he hasn’t “seen any pests inside or outside the bin” since. DSNY has a special machine called the Tiger that can sort (clear) plastic bags from organic waste. “It’s like a gigantic two-story corkscrew,” says Goodman.
Illustration: Pete Gamlen
➽ Most of the experts I spoke with keep their scraps in the freezer, where bugs cannot spawn and decomposition (thus smell) is paused. The fridge won’t totally halt decomposition, but it will buy you some time.
➽ Low on freezer space? Try a bowl with a dishcloth. Countertop bins work just fine, but Golde founder Trinity Mouzon Wofford, who cooks multiple times a day, prefers throwing scraps into a large enamel mixing bowl in her kitchen. She covers it with a dish towel to keep out fruit flies, then empties it every night. The bowl allows for more airflow than a traditional bin, which can reduce odors.
➽ Add something brown and dry to your bin to cut down on smell. Compost is a mix of nitrogen-rich “greens” (think banana peels, apple cores, anything that gets juicier as it rots) — which can stink as they break down — and carbon-rich “browns” (dry leaves, wood shavings, paper). Adding newspaper, sawdust, or wood chips can “help soak up the water and the juices, which helps deter the smell,” says Anneliese Zausner-Mannes, a program manager at Big Reuse.
➽ If you’re rot-averse, consider a food recycler. Machines like the Lomi ($649) and the Mill ($999) grind up food scraps overnight and dehydrate them into an odorless, soil-like blend that can be added to any compost stream. Mouzon Wofford was initially skeptical of these expensive recyclers, but she says the Mill, which she owns, “does genuinely make it a lot more manageable to keep food waste from going into the landfill.”
➽ Call 311 if your landlord isn’t putting out a compost bin or your compost isn’t being picked up. In the latter case, leave the bin on the curb so the worker investigating the complaint can see it, says Jessica Wang, a project manager at Earth Matter.
➽ The city gives away compost soil. There’s “black gold” at DSNY’s four pickup sites in Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens. Register online ahead of time, and get there when it opens, because “you’ve got hard-core gardeners who will be there early,” says Nurse.
Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 11, 2025, issue of
New York Magazine.
Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now
to support our journalism and get unlimited access to our coverage.
If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 11, 2025, issue of
New York Magazine.
Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter
A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice
Related