TESTIMONY
Rhonda Keyser, Chair, Brooklyn Solid Waste Advisory Board on Prioritizing Composting Infrastructure in NYC
1:20:52
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3 min
Rhonda Keyser, Chair of the Brooklyn Solid Waste Advisory Board, argues for prioritizing composting over anaerobic co-digestion in managing New York City's organic waste.
- Keyser represents the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Bronx Solid Waste Advisory Boards, advocating for infrastructure investments in composting.
- She claims composting is at least as cost-effective as anaerobic co-digestion, the city's primary organic waste processing method.
- Keyser highlights the expanded composting capacities at Fresh Hills and Newtown Creek facilities, debunking concerns over processing capacity.
- She emphasizes the need for education and outreach to increase participation in organic waste composting, comparing it to the city's recycling history.
Rhonda Keyser
1:20:52
Sorry.
1:20:52
Hold on.
1:20:54
Hi.
1:20:54
I'm Rhonda Kiser.
1:20:55
I'm chair of the Brooklyn Solid Waste Advisory Board or Schwab.
1:20:58
Thank you, Terabrio, and to the council for your thoughtful questions today, and to the DS and Y for your presence.
1:21:04
The Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Bronx swabs previously recommended that the city prioritize composting over the practice of co digestion to process the 80% of the city's residential and commercial organic streams.
1:21:16
Our testimony today extends our previous recommendation to the infrastructure required to support composting and is on behalf of the Brooklyn Manhattan and Bronx swabs with pending approval from the queen swab.
1:21:27
We believe the infrastructure needed to support composting will be at least as cost effective as anaerobic decodigestion, the city's majority processing method.
1:21:36
If plan if planning an infrastructure for composting are done right, composting can be competitive with the predominant process we employ now, which is disposal organics as refuse to landfill and incineration.
1:21:47
If the environmental and social harms avoided by composting organics rather than disposal as refuse, and the social benefits of composting and compost are factored into the cost benefit analysis as they should be, the competitive advantage goes to composting easily.
1:22:02
The infrastructure discussion has often been clouded by concerns about processing capacity constraints that are cited as an obstacle to a successful organics program in the New York City.
1:22:11
These constraints we know are no longer an issue.
1:22:14
The current composting capacity of the city's organics processing at Fresh Hills facility on Staten Island has been expanded as we've talked about today to a 104,000 tons per year.
1:22:25
And the Newtown Creek wastewater resource recovery facility organic processing capacity through anaerobic codigestion is estimated between 65,000 and 130,000 tons per year.
1:22:35
Today, therefore, there are these just these two facilities can process between 169,000 to 234,000 tons of organics per year or 15% to 21% of our total residential organics per year.
1:22:48
To put this current organic processing capacity into perspective, by 2025 after the full rollout of curbside organics collection to
UNKNOWN
1:22:55
all boroughs, We estimate advance you so much.
1:22:58
Your time has expired.
Shaun Abreu
1:22:59
You you can finish.
Rhonda Keyser
1:23:01
Okay.
1:23:02
Thank you.
1:23:04
That we estimate it best that the participation will be about 10% of the 1,100,000 tons of total organics.
1:23:13
Will be diverted for for refuse from refuse.
1:23:17
So these simple back of the envelope numbers indicate that we likely have some time before we start to encounter process and constraints even as we rolled out the mandatory curbside collection to the 3 remaining boroughs of Staten Island, Manhattan, and the Bronx.
1:23:30
As a reminder, recycling's progress is instructive.
1:23:34
Recycling of metal glass and plastic and paper was mandatory in as of 1989.
1:23:39
And today in 2024, after 30 years of education outreach and enforcement, and one notable stop and start, New York City's capture rate for all recycling streams combined excluding organics has stagnated at 50%.
1:23:52
It is unlikely that we will experience the participation necessary to achieve a 50% capture rate anytime soon with organics without meaningful education and outreach.
Shaun Abreu
1:24:01
Thank you so much.
Rhonda Keyser
1:24:02
Yeah.
1:24:02
Thank you.
1:24:04
The New York City compost project is such outreach, and we we recommend not defending it as your final.
1:24:11
Thank you.
