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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Anna Sacks, Representative of Save Our Compost Coalition
3:59:05
ยท
123 sec
Anna Sacks, representing the Save Our Compost Coalition, requests $11.4 million in funding for various community composting organizations across New York City. She emphasizes the importance of making community composting a permanent feature of the city's waste management landscape and highlights its educational value.
- The funding would support expanding the scope of work for existing groups and include additional organizations.
- Sacks suggests viewing community composting sites as part of DSNY's ongoing waste disposal infrastructure, similar to contracts with other waste management companies.
- She emphasizes the educational aspect of community composting, especially for school children, to improve the current low organic waste capture rate of around 4%.
Anna Sacks
3:59:05
Hi.
3:59:05
My name is Anna Sachs.
3:59:06
I'm with the Save Our Compost Coalition.
3:59:08
We're asking for 11,400,000.0 for community composting organization, which includes the Lower East Side Ecology Center, Earth Matter, Big Reuse, Compost Power, Cafeteria Culture, Queens Botanic Garden, BK Rots, Snug Harbor, Green Fiend Organics, Brotherhood, Sister Soul, Red Hope Initiative, East New York Farms, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx River Alliance, Center for Zero Waste Design, Astoria Pug, up and Uptown and Bookie Healthy Project.
3:59:31
So this increased amount reflects that we're adding additional groups that are requesting funding, and the fund the groups that were already funded are requesting additional funding so that it can expand the scope of the work they do.
3:59:45
And so that the Lower East Side Ecology Center can build out a physical a new physical site in Canarsie.
3:59:51
We would like to make this more permanent, a more permanent feature of New York City's waste landscape so that it's less of a of a fight each year or up in the air.
4:00:03
And one of the ways to view this is to build up these community composting sites so that DSNY can pay for this physical infrastructure similar to the way that they pay for recurring contracts to waste management for the anaerobic co digestion and to Denali for the, fresh fuels composting sites.
4:00:24
So we are hoping that with more community composting sites processing more material, that this can be something that DSMI views as, like, an ongoing recurring waste disposal expense.
4:00:35
And it's also important to view this as an ongoing education cost, especially as we try to get the capture rate up for organics, which is right now is around 4%, which is very low.
4:00:47
So we would like the council to consider increasing funding to 11,400,000.0 for all these groups and the good work that they do and to view this as an investment in processing and processing food scraps and in ongoing education, especially education for our school kids and especially education about the curbside
Shaun Abreu
4:01:07
organic inspired.