As The City Cuts Sustainability, New Yorkers Get Creative To Pick Up The Slack

Submitted for Columbia Journalism reporting class on October 17, 2021

Back at the beginning of the pandemic, two Astoria residents turned up at a Long Island City community garden with a car full of food scraps, hoping to compost all 500 pounds. 

They were turned away.

With temperatures rising, along with the stench, Caren Tedesco and her partner Lou Reyes had to do something, but there was a problem. On March 20, 2020, the City of New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) suspended food scrap drop-off sites “in order to limit person-to-person contact” and to allow workers “to refocus on core operations,” per a press release. A month later, due to COVID-19 budget cuts, curbside composting was halted. 

“People were just like, ‘you cannot stop this. I cannot throw my food scraps in the garbage,” Tedesco said. 

Over one-fifth of residential waste in New York City is food waste, according to DSNY’s 2017 NYC Waste Characterization Study. Food waste, when put in landfills, produces methane. A report by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation found that, in 2014, landfill emissions made up 58% of methane emissions in New York State. Composting food waste, however, does not generate greenhouse emissions and is a sustainable alternative to throwing it food the trash.

“A citywide curbside composting program and an expansion of community-based disposal means less waste in landfills, and a healthier city for all of us," said Laura Anglin, Deputy Mayor for Operations, of Mayor de Blasio’s decision to resume curbside composting in April 2021.

Tedesco and Reyes got creative. They hired a commercial hauler and launched Astoria Pug, named after their dog, Rocky. To date, they’ve opened up six volunteer-run food waste drop-off sites throughout Astoria. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to send zero waste to landfills by 2030, but pandemic priorities undermined that goal. In December 2020, the New York City Parks Department tried to evict two large compost processing sites over a land squabble (the leases were extended after a groundswell of community support). The city also failed to reduce waste from plastic film — thin sheets of plastic that are used for items like shopping bags and consumer packaging — which, according to GrowNYC, accounts for 7.5% of the city’s entire waste stream. Despite a March 2020 ban on plastic shopping bags, the city did not begin enforcing the ban until seven months later. (This was partially because of the pandemic and partially because of a lawsuit brought on by a plastic bag manufacturer and some grocery store and bodega owners.)

Consumers can, at least, use reusable totes instead of plastic bags, but ditching packaging is trickier. Finding household items, groceries, and cleaning products not encased in plastic requires extra effort, like shopping at special package-free stores.

Instead of selling pre-packaged items — bottles of shampoo or boxes of quinoa — package-free or zero-waste stores require customers to bring their own containers, which they then fill with bulk goods and pay by weight. These can include anything from lentils to body wash to yeast.

Kayli Kunkel was living in Astoria when she noticed there was not a single zero-waste store in Queens. After she was let go from her marketing director job at the height of the pandemic, she opened up Earth and Me, a brick-and-mortar zero-waste store, in Astoria in December 2020. In September 2021, she moved it to a bigger location. 

Hayley Nguyen, who co-owns La Nature, a zero-waste store in Park Slope, had been interested in low-waste living for years, and she’d always had an entrepreneurial spirit. She knew since high school that she’d eventually start a business. But it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that she finally made the leap. After some informal market research (surveying people in Facebook groups) she and her partner put their savings toward La Nature, which opened in May 2021.

Kunkel and Nguyen both said that they wouldn’t have started their businesses if the pandemic hadn’t made them reconsider the corporate grind (and lowered commercial rents). 

Other package-free retailers have popped up in this time, too: Eco Bronx started in September 2020; Fill Uptown soft launched August 2021; A Sustainable Village opened in September 2021.

Nguyen believes package-free shops will become a trend. “I have people walk into my store almost every week saying, ‘I'm opening up a store. Can I ask some questions?’” Her dream is to have a zero-waste store on every corner, “instead of a 7-Eleven.”

Until then, zero-waste stores may have an accessibility problem. “I think they cater to higher income individuals who have the time and resources to make the change,” Sarah Nylund, a sustainability advocate and graduate student at CUNY Baruch, said. 

At Earth and Me, body wash retails for $1/ounce, while at CVS, 12 oz. of body wash can cost just under $2. La Nature and Earth and Me are both located in affluent neighborhoods. And unless you live nearby, visiting requires planning: making the trip, bringing containers. “It's kind of inconvenient compared to, you know, walking to your corner store and grabbing something,” Nguyen said.

The same can be said of composting: it’s inconvenient, even now. Only some city drop-off sites have reopened, and curbside composting, which resumes this month, is not available in every district. Nylund lives in Clinton Hill and was waitlisted for curbside pickup. Astoria, with its numerous drop-off sites (many of which are run by Astoria Pug), is considered too well-served to get the brown bin program. 

At least Tedesco has noticed one upside of the city’s cuts. 

“The interest in composting has been growing because people started learning about it after the drop-off places shut down,” she said.

Nguyen also acknowledged the pandemic played a big part in her business’ success. “I think it made people reevaluate how they live their life,” she said. “They wanted to do a little bit more for the environment, they wanted to pursue a more intentional living lifestyle.”

Nylund said that real change must come from corporations and the government, but individual contributions shouldn’t be discounted, either. “If me making changes, and me talking about the changes I'm making, makes other people change, then that can be significant.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons