{"id":32788,"date":"2024-05-11T15:58:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-11T15:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/?p=32788"},"modified":"2024-05-11T15:58:39","modified_gmt":"2024-05-11T15:58:39","slug":"mayor-adams-completes-rollout-of-composting-in-all-new-york-city-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/archives\/32788","title":{"rendered":"Mayor Adams completes rollout of composting in all New York city public schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Department of Education (DOE) Chancellor David C. Banks, and New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that the Adams administration has completed its expansion of composting to every single New York City public school, three months ahead of schedule.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That means that all New York city public schools are now composting their food waste \u2014 putting their orange peels, uneaten pizza crusts, compostable food trays, and more to beneficial use for the city and for the planet, helping gardens grow, and creating power through renewable energy here in the New York city area.<\/p>\n

\u201cComposting is a win-win-win \u2014 it keeps waste out of landfills, greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, and rats out of our communities,\u201d said Mayor Adams.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re proud to bring our nation-leading composting program to all of our city\u2019s public schools ahead of schedule, and we\u2019re excited for the cleaner, greener buildings and sidewalks that this initiative will create. Today\u2019s announcement is a major step towards our rollout of free, easy weekly curbside composting to every New Yorker, on every block, in every borough by the end of this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am grateful for the collaboration between the Department of Sanitation and Department of Education to deliver for New York\u2019s school kids \u2014 this is what New Yorkers expect and how it should work,\u201d said Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best learning happens when we connect what\u2019s in the classroom and the real world. This program not only pays dividends for the environment, but for our kids as well, who are the climate crisis natives who will have to be smarter on the environment than any generation prior.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York City\u2019s public schools serve as community hubs in every neighborhood, championing the shift to greener infrastructure and raising the next generation of climate conscious leaders. Bringing composting to every school is one of the many ways we are showing our commitment to climate action,\u201d said DOE Chancellor Banks.<\/p>\n

\u201cComposting programs allow our students to demonstrate leadership in sustainability every day in their cafeterias, and I am grateful to the many educators and staff in our schools who make this work possible, for our students and our planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBringing this service to every public school will save millions of pounds of compostable material from going to landfills, while educating the next generation of New Yorkers to think clean and think green,\u201d said DSNY Commissioner Tisch. \u201cThis milestone is great news for the planet, and bad news for the rats, who will no longer have access to food waste outside of schools every evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReducing methane emissions \u2014 a greenhouse gas more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period \u2014 is a key pillar of the city\u2019s climate strategy, and diverting waste from landfills also reduces truck traffic emissions,\u201d said Mayor\u2019s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice Executive Director Elijah Hutchinson.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis composting program, along with solar installations on school roofs, school gardens, and climate education, are just a few of the ways that New York City\u2019s public schools and families are helping \u2018Get Sustainability Done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are delighted about the announcement of school composting and are celebrating this victory for our schools and environment,\u201d said Mayor’s Office of Food Policy Executive Director Kate MacKenzie.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitiatives like Plant Powered Fridays, our new plant-based, scratch-cooked recipes, and our Food Education Roadmap have taken huge steps forward in reducing the environmental impact of food served in our schools, but that is only one piece of the equation. We need to address what happens to food left on students’ plates. We are excited to see students being able to participate in sustainable food waste disposal in their own cafeterias.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cComposting programs are needed to provide New York City students the chance to reduce food waste and learn more about the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the source,\u201d said Mayor’s Office of Urban Agriculture Executive Director Qiana Mickie.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mayor\u2019s Office of Urban Agriculture applauds the efforts of DOE, the largest public school system in the country, for making composting a reality at all public schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

For roughly a decade, less than half of New York City public schools separated their compostable material. That changed less than two years ago, when Mayor Adams, DSNY Commissioner Tisch, and DOE Chancellor Banks kicked off the most aggressive expansion of school composting the city has ever seen, with over 1,000 schools converting to composting service since January 2022.<\/p>\n

With the most recent addition of 150 schools in Brooklyn and Queens, the Adams administration has reached its goal of bringing composting to every public school in the city three months ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n

Each school has received training for custodial staff, faculty, and students to learn the right way to separate compost and the importance of doing so. Many schools have student \u201cGreen Teams\u201d or \u201ccafeteria monitors\u201d who remind peers how to sort compost, and each school designates a sustainability coordinator on their staff to promote climate action in their school.<\/p>\n

School lunch areas now have stations with several containers: a bin to dump liquids; a bin for food waste, compostable trays and silverware, and food-soiled paper; a bin for milk cartons, rigid plastic, and metal; and a bin for the small amount of trash that is neither recyclable nor compostable \u2014 usually just thin, plastic film.<\/p>\n

Custodial staff then place the food waste at the curb in sealed, rat-proof bins for pickup five evenings a week. Schools can access ongoing support from New York City public schools to divert waste from landfills.<\/p>\n

This school composting milestone comes as the city embarks on the final phase of launching the nation\u2019s largest and easiest curbside composting program, bringing curbside composting to every single resident in New York City by this fall. After the initial rollout of this program, last year\u2019s Mayor\u2019s Management Report showed that New Yorkers composted a record 200 million pounds of material in Fiscal Year 2023. The expansion of curbside composting service will continue to get more and more food waste out of black bags and out of landfills.<\/p>\n

New York City schools generate more than 80 million pounds of refuse per year, over 47 percent of which is food waste and food-soiled paper. When allowed to decompose at a landfill, food waste creates methane, a potent and dangerous greenhouse gas. Separating compostable material from trash is one easy way to ensure a cleaner, greener city.<\/p>\n

Additionally, since the curbside composting program was expanded to include all rodent mitigation zone schools in the Bronx last school year, there has been a 38 percent decrease in active rat signs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 New York City Mayor Eric Adams, New York City Department of Education (DOE) Chancellor David C. Banks, and New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced that the Adams administration has completed its expansion of composting to every single New York City public school, three months ahead of schedule. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":32789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1469,31,1378],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-york","category-news","category-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32791,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32788\/revisions\/32791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}