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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. As some of you know, for the past couple of weeks, we've added a feature here on the show that we will continue for the next six months, a climate story of the week because the climate crisis is so important to our world, but it doesn't have fast-breaking news, like an invasion of another country or an election campaign. We are making sure we reserve a room on the show to talk about something climate-related at least once a week.

Today's climate story of the week is on composting and why it's an important function in combating climate change. Our news hook is that, as you may have heard, Mayor Adams has paused expansion of New York City's curbside organics pickup. Let's talk about why cities and households might want to help the climate through composting in the first place. Why does this matter? Well, according to some, composting is one of the easiest ways to reduce the planet's warming emissions. It can be done by going to a drop-off facility or putting it into your backyard garden if you have a garden, but composting itself produces some CO2, so let's take a closer look.

Joining us to discuss the ways that composting mitigates climate change is Eric Goldstein, New York City environmental director at the Natural Resources Defense Council Environmental Group, and co-director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the NYU Law School. Hi, Eric. Thanks for coming on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Eric Goldstein: Great to be with you, Brian. Hope you get lots of new members today.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks a lot. Can we start with one of the basics for people who don't exactly know what composting is? What is it really?

Eric Goldstein: Sure. Composting is a natural process for recycling food scraps, and yard waste, and food-soiled paper. It's basically just speeding up the natural decomposition of these materials. You take food scraps, you introduce some fungus, bacteria, worms, and beetles, you mix them with a little air, and before you know it, you get the finished compost that looks like fertile soil, and it can be used as a natural fertilizer and for other good things.

Brian Lehrer: What role does food waste play in climate change? Why are we talking about composting and climate change in the same sentence?

Eric Goldstein: Well, food scraps and other organics like yard waste are the single largest portion of the municipal waste stream here in New York City and in every municipality around the country. About a third of the total household waste that we generate, here in New York, it's about 4,000 tons a day, is food scraps and yard waste.

Right now, the way we handle that is contributed to climate change and also a significant cost to the city government, and also a pollution problem. Most of our food waste now is sent to landfills or incinerators outside of the city, and as far away as South Carolina. We send this food waste to an incinerator, the high moisture content fouls up the burn.

It's like putting a wet log on a campfire, it generates additional air pollution. If we bury it in the landfill, as this food waste decomposes, it generates methane, and methane is a very, very potent global warming gas, and landfills are the third-largest source of human-produced methane in the United States. If we want to tackle the climate crisis, we've got to find a way to get our food waste and yard waste out of landfills, and composting is the ideal answer.

Brian Lehrer: I saw an FDA estimate that between 30% and 40% of the food supply in the US each year is thrown away. Is that your stat?

Eric Goldstein: Yes, that's correct. That's really the place to start because if there's one thing that's better than composting, it's making sure we don't generate food waste in the first place. With so many people in need of edible food, we need to do much more to reduce the amount of food waste we generate by getting excess edible food from restaurants and from farms over to food pantries and to people who are in need.

Brian Lehrer: What can be composted? I'm a little confused because I think drop-offs that the group GrowNYC offers at the farmer's markets don't accept meat, or bones, or dairy, but curbside bins where the city picks up do allow those. What's the difference?

Eric Goldstein: Well, ultimately, anything that was living will decompose and can ultimately be composted, but there are different processes and different timetables. Depending upon where your materials are being composted, whether it's in a backyard bin or a commercial composting facility, slightly different materials are acceptable. We know that everywhere, you don't want to send trash or recyclables like metal, plastics, and glass into your compost, nor do you want to include things like dog and cat litter or diapers.

For backyard composting, and for a lot of the materials that community drop-off places accept like GrowNYC, you want to avoid meat and fish and chicken and bones and grease and oil and dairy products. Again, ultimately, these materials can all be composted, but the cleaner the materials you put in your compost bin, the easier it is for them to ultimately be composted.

Brian Lehrer: In New York City, the last three mayoral administrations, including Adams, have tried to integrate curbside composting into everyday life, but each one has hit a wall and stopped an expansion that they promised initially. Why is it so hard?

Eric Goldstein: Well, we are half-heartedly been entering into the composting world, and the experience in places where composting has really become successful in cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, there has been a real commitment made that has been maintained throughout a change in administrations.

In Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, laws were passed, programs were adopted, people knew composting was coming. They were provided with frequent curbside collection, they were oftentimes provided with the bins themselves, collection schedules were adjusted so that there were more frequent collections of the food waste than for regular trash. There was a strong consistent multilingual educational outreach program. When you put all those elements together and commit to making the program work and phase it in over a number of years, the experience in those cities proves it can be very successful, and there's no reason why New York can't be a leader in this area too.

Brian Lehrer: Last question. Well, the city program remains meh institutionally, how can people best compost as individuals if they want to do that?

Eric Goldstein: Well, there are many places where if you are a private homeowner, you can set up a backyard composting and just look at any website, whether it's GrowNYC, or the Botanic Gardens, or the New York City Department of Sanitation, and you can get instructions on backyard composting.

Also, there are drop-off places run by wonderful non-profit organizations like the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and Big Reuse, and the community gardens, in many cases, and the Botanical Gardens and for the boroughs. These are all places where people who really want to compost even before the city implements a full curbside program for every city neighborhood, these are places where folks can come and drop off their food wastes to ultimately be composted.

Brian Lehrer: Eric Goldstein, New York City environmental director at the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-director of the Environmental Law Clinic at the NYU Law School, thank you for joining us and being our guests on our climate story of the week.

Eric Goldstein: Thanks, Brian.

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