TESTIMONY
Gil Lopez, Member of the Queens Solid Waste Advisory Board, on the Need for Proper Anaerobic Digestion and the Value of Community Composting
1:27:07
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172 sec
Gil Lopez highlights the critical need for proper anaerobic digestion and the value of community composting for efficient waste management in New York City.
- Lopez differentiates between pure anaerobic digestion and the city's current practice of co-digesting clean food scraps with sewage.
- He stresses the importance of brown bin and smart bin programs for managing the city's organic waste.
- Criticizes the defunding of the New York City compost project and underscores the significance of community composting.
- Advocates for the use of waste byproducts from pure anaerobic digestion as fertilizers for edible crops.
- Expresses concern over the mayor's sustainability efforts clashing with the City Council's climate emergency act and its goals for combating climate change.
Gil Lopez
1:27:07
Mike.
1:27:08
Hi.
1:27:09
My name is Gil Lopez.
1:27:11
I'm gonna skip over most of my qualifications.
1:27:14
I will say that I'm on the queen's swab.
1:27:16
On the organics committee, I do work for bigger use, but not for the New York City compost project, which has completely been defunded.
1:27:23
There's no jobs that have been saved by the city.
1:27:25
Budget.
1:27:25
It was all private money.
1:27:27
But I am funded my work is funded by several council members.
1:27:31
Thank you to many of you who are here today.
1:27:34
And I have a few things that I wanna say, so I'm gonna dive into it.
1:27:38
I first wanna say that I believe that brown bins and the smart bins are at absolutely imperative for New York City and the municipal program.
1:27:46
We have so much organics that we need to deal with that it is actually very necessary that these programs exist.
1:27:55
Anaerobic digestion has been used improperly today What the city does is anaerobic co digestion when the city mixes our clean food scraps, which residents work so hard to separate from the other waste streams.
1:28:07
And the city then mixes them with sewage.
1:28:11
That's a completely different thing.
1:28:13
Well, it's not completely different, but it's very different from anaerobic digestion.
1:28:16
The that waste byproduct of digestion can be used to fertilize fields of edible crops.
1:28:22
You cannot do that with anaerobically co digested material.
1:28:27
So I I want people to be very clear about their language when they talk about this.
1:28:31
And I wanna be clear that the mayor's plan NYC preface the use of organic material collected by DSNY to go to anaerobic digest.
1:28:41
And so earlier when the DSNY person was talking about, oh, well, those those 80% to be composted and or to anaerobic digestion and and 20% the compost is gonna flip, not if the mayor and his sustainability office have anything to do with it, which is ironic because in 2019, see how City Council passed a climate emergency act, which said that we were gonna do everything we can to reverse the impacts of climate change in the city.
1:29:12
Now when we burn our biogas created by anaerobic code digestion system, it does create could Okay.
1:29:20
So I just wanna say that community composting is very important, having the ability for people to volunteer in their community to C composting happening brings us closer to understanding of being a part of our waste systems, which makes us more human.
1:29:34
The process touching compost, turning into good soil, applying it to gardens, with children, with aging adults.
1:29:43
I do this all the time.
1:29:44
Very important work, and the idea that the city can implement the brown bin, which I acknowledge is absolutely imperative and completely throw the community that's been doing this work for decades.
1:29:56
No bones at all is ludicrous and completely disrespectful.
