NYC expands food composting to fight waste

NEW YORK (FOX5NY.COM) - Crunch on these numbers: up to 40 percent of the food in the United States is never eaten, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. Each year, Americans throw away more than 400 pounds of food per person, costing a household of four an average of $1,800 annually. That is a loss of up to $218 billion each year.

"It's really looking at our waste stream and trying to drive both the residential and the commercial sector to really recycling and pushing towards beneficial reuse," Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia said.

That is why in February New York City's Sanitation Department announced new rules expanding the organic waste separation program to businesses.

"We keep looking every year at what the capacity is region-wide for food processing," Garcia said. "We made a determination that we could expand it to a new group of businesses."

Garcia said commercial sectors produce about 3,000 tons of waste a day.

"The primary focus on this is to reduce the amount of waste going to landfills, to reduce the footprint of the City of New York in terms of how many greenhouse gases are created, which is what happens with organic waste," Garcia said.

The new rules will affect 1,700 New York City businesses that will be required by law to separate their organic waste. The rules will apply to restaurants with over 15,000 square feet, chain restaurants with 100 or more locations in the city, and grocery stores with 25,000 square feet.

"For businesses, food waste is really profit going down the drain and so we really try to support that sector," Garcia said. "We gave out some micro-grants recently to allow some businesses to experiment with how to reduce the amount of food waste."

Stadiums, food manufacturers and wholesalers, and large hotels are already putting their food waste to reuse. For example, the chain restaurant Dos Toros is doing it as well. The company's leaders believe in sustainability.

Meanwhile, Garcia said the new rules are expected to divert about 50,000 tons of food waste from landfills every year.

The new rules go into effect on August 15, 2018, but they won't be enforced until February 2019. Those who don't comply with the new law will be fined anywhere from $250 to $1,000.