Long Island’s first town-run food scrap recycling site opened Thursday.
The Town of Riverhead partnered with nonprofits Long Island Organics Council and Green Inside and Out to launch the drop-off site in Calverton where organic waste will be converted into compost.
Riverhead’s program comes as Long Island towns and the rest of the state are looking for ways to reduce, reuse and recycle the 30% of New York’s waste stream that comes from food scraps, yard trimmings and other organic waste. “We want to do our part and are excited to be leading the way,” Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar said in a statement.
Only Riverhead Town residents, and potentially restaurants and small businesses, will be allowed to sign up for the pilot program. The launch of the program is funded by a $20,000 grant from the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute, but will be the responsibility of the town to continue, said Town Engineer Drew Dillingham.
When residents sign up, they can purchase from the town for $10 a two-gallon countertop bucket and a roll of biodegradable bags; or for $25 a seven gallon bucket, a two gallon bucket and a roll of biodegradable bags. Once full, they will bring the countertop compost bin to the town’s waste facility on Youngs Avenue, and pour their food scraps into the dozen recycling containers there.
Town engineers will haul the 500-pound containers to a three-acre compost area behind the facility.
“Put it in the payloader, bring the compost to the top of the hill, just spread it out and then put grounds right on top of it," Dillingham said.
“Turn it once a week for three to six months, lots of variables, and hopefully by then turn into ‘black gold.’”
This rich soil created through composting will then be available for participating residents and nearby agriculture. A smaller pilot program between the Town of Riverhead and the Greater Calverton Civic Association last year turned the food scraps from nine homes, the Riverhead Senior Center, Bean & Bagel and LuchaCubano into nearly two tons of compost at the Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center and the Roanoke Lavender Farm.
Dillingham said he expects around 20% of families in Riverhead to participate in this new program — based on the amount of families that participated in other upstate municipalities, including the towns of Greenburgh and Scarsdale.
The drop-off site only accepts certain types of food scraps and is expected to receive less than half of the total food scraps produced by the town. However, it’s another small step toward achieving Riverhead’s solid waste management plan to divert almost all of the town's food scrap waste from landfills by 2030.
“Most of Long Island's waste is being incinerated and trucked out of the state contributing unnecessarily to greenhouse gases,” said Judy Greco, co-director of Long Island Organics Council.
The advantage of community composting is that it can help to reduce the amount of organic waste in landfills by providing space for local residents to compost food scraps, yard waste and other biodegradable materials. Composting creates a nutrient-rich soil amendment that can be used to grow healthy plants. And by using this soil instead of synthetic fertilizers, the community can reduce its reliance on non-renewable resources and decrease the amount of waste generated by synthetic fertilizers.
When organic waste decomposes in landfills, it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By composting this waste, the community can also help to reduce the amount of methane released into the atmosphere, mitigating the impact of climate change.
“That's why it just makes more sense to use the nutrients and food scraps we already have here instead of turning them into waste,” Greco added.
This aligns with the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) first-ever sustainability plan released on Friday, identifying 25 goals and dozens of actions the state agency will take over the next five years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, decrease waste generation and increase investments in green products. The plan was established to comply with Governor Kathy Hochul’s executive order last September, ordering departments to decarbonize state facilities and projects.
The state agency will encourage local governments and partners to also recycle and
divert organics waste from disposal in landfills or municipal waste combustors.
In addition, as part of its decennial solid waste management plan, the DEC is looking to change regulations to require small businesses and homeowners to recycle their food scraps if they live within 25 miles of a drop-off site, like large institutions currently do. (Community input on the statewide plan is due June 14.)
But regulators say most people on Long Island live too far away from recycling sites for this to work.
Greco said there are community-led efforts across Long Island that make small, but meaningful contributions to reducing and reusing residential food waste.
In Brookhaven, community members started a compost garden in 2021 at the Chris Hobson and Bill Neal Memorial Community Garden in North Bellport, which is approximately four miles from the Brookhaven Landfill. That facility is one of two remaining town-run landfills on Long Island, and is expected to close over the next few years.
A community compost garden can help educate residents about sustainable living by providing a tangible example of how composting can benefit the environment, according to the Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group (BLARG), which advocates for the immediate closure of the landfill to protect the nearby community from potential environmental and health impacts. They also want the town to update its decade-overdue solid waste management plan based on community input and equitable regional planning.
“We’re encouraging people to learn how to compost to reduce the products being dumped in the landfill, but also to enrich our community by planting fruits and vegetables,” said Khadija Yanni, a member of BLARG. The local area lacked nutritious stores and was a “food desert” for healthy produce, she added.
In the community garden sit several garden beds, a space for children to tinker with outdoor toys, a set of benches, tables and chairs, as well as the compost plot.
In 2021, BLARG started a 90-day pilot program at the garden called the Anti Landfill Composting Collective for the summer. In just a single summer, the community collected and composted 1,300 pounds of food scraps from 20 families. The garden opened for this year’s season on Sunday, May 13.
“We have to change our culture,” said Monique Fitzgerald, co-founder of BLARG. “Right now we have a throwaway disposable culture where we produce waste with no plans for where it’s going to end up.”
On eastern Long Island, which exports most of its garbage to landfills across New York and beyond, the towns of Southampton, Shelter Island and East Hampton are also exploring their own residential food scrap recycling programs, Suffolk County Legislator Al Krupski said.
“It is such a big problem in every community. And here Riverhead is stepping up,” Krupski said. “And the outcome is going to be less trucks on the road. And it also should be better soil health for agricultural lands.”
For Riverhead, the Youngs Avenue facility in Calverton is open from Thursday to Monday from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Ashley Pavlakis, Kelsie Radziski, Samantha Rutt and Ishita Sharma contributed reporting to this story. WSHU’s Trash Talkin’ series is produced in collaboration with Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism.
