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By Jacob Wallace

Dive Brief:

• The New York City Council and Mayor Eric Adams have agreed to restore more than $6 million in funding for community composting, reviving a program that was axed by the mayor’s budget cuts in the fall but received strong political support from council members.
• The council also shifted the funding mechanism for the program in a way that would shield it from future budget cuts and added money for other sanitation priorities.
• The restored funding will cover longstanding groups such as GrowNYC. It also funds a broader range of organizations than before, including microhauler Bk Rot and The Brotherhood Sister Sol, which operates a community garden in Manhattan.

Dive Insight:

The $112.4 billion budget is expected to close a difficult chapter for the city’s small-scale composters, who have held rallies and spoken at council hearings about their dissatisfaction with Adams’ treatment of their work.

The Adams administration cut all funding for the New York City community composting program in November. At the time, Adams said the city was facing rapidly escalating costs related to services for migrants entering the city and funding shortfalls. He directed all agencies to cut 5% of their budgets to make up for the gap, and the city’s Department of Sanitation made the decision to nix the program.

But some of the budget concerns proved to be short-lived, as the administration began restoring funding for programs like litter basket service in January.

Private funding helped maintain operations for some of the composting groups into this year, but it didn’t cover all of them. Even some of those that received money, such as GrowNYC, recently announced layoffs.

In the city’s FY25 budget approved on Sunday, the community composting program will receive $6.245 million. That funding comes from a pot of money controlled by the council rather than DSNY, which means the Adams administration would not be able to touch the program should it institute budget cuts during this fiscal year. The shift in responsibility for the community composting program also allowed the council to fund additional environmental justice and climate-based groups, according to the office of New York City Council Member Shaun Abreu.

DSNY did not respond to a request for comment.

The budget includes $5 million for organics processing infrastructure for the Lower East Side Ecology Center, as well as $25 million for “rodent-proof” litter baskets and increased trash pick-ups. Abreu, who chairs the council’s sanitation committee, touted the funding as an environmental victory.

“We are never going to slash and burn our way to a green city,” he said in a statement. “Today, we celebrate these wins. Tomorrow, we continue the work toward a cleaner, safer, climate-resilient city.”