Hello Decomposers,

Welcome back to Compost Corner.

Let’s talk about the NYC City Budget win.

You knew this was coming.

If you’ve been reading Compost Corner, you know I have personally been affected by the lack of composting investment in the city budget.

In 2025, I had to pause my Master Composter Certification for three months while we waited for discretionary funding to come back. You’ve read other posts where I’ve lamented the restrictions of the DSNY brown bin rollout and talked about why we need to invest in community composting.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

First, let’s start with the basics. Call this Composting 101, if you will. (Roll with me.)

What is compost?

Compost is a soil amendment used to improve soil health. It is almost entirely comprised of organic matter that has decomposed.

What is composting?

Composting is the human-managed biological process of decomposition. The goal of composting is to maintain an environment where chemical and physical decomposers can thrive!

The origin of composting is as old as humanity. People all over the world have been stewarding the cycle of organic matter to improve soil quality for thousands of years.

The waste management history of NYC is a bit more complicated.

Historically, the city has incinerated, landfilled, and ocean dumped waste (which destroyed the oysters, a whole other mess for another blog). In fact, much of NYC is built on trash.

I could write thousands of words about how environmental issues are deeply connected to civil rights issues. We could talk about Waste Transfer Stations, environmental justice, and the health effects and demographics of the neighborhoods most affected by the city’s massive amounts of trash.

But let’s focus on composting, because this city budget win means these important issues will continue to be covered through the Master Composter Certification Program.

In the 1960s and 70s, things began to change. Community gardeners and guerrilla composters worked to reclaim abandoned lots and create green spaces in their communities.

More recently, the NYC Compost Project was founded in 1993. The project was a collaborative effort between nonprofit organizations and botanical gardens with funding from DSNY until December of 2023.

When the funding stopped.

Like, dead stopped.

It wasn’t fun. Seriously, no fun was had.

The last two-plus years of composting in NYC have been a journey (to say the least).

In 2025, DSNY (which I hope you’re all reading as Disney because I still do) rolled out curbside collection as part of the city’s industrial composting program. The brown bins, you’ve seen them.

The program has big aspirations and has led to increased knowledge of the science and benefits of composting. But the program has its limitations.

Community composting has tried to fill those gaps, but with so much time spent literally begging for funding, there was a lot of room to grow.

In 2024 and 2025, many of us composters spent months (MONTHS) trying to get the city to include community composting in the city budget, with no success.

We showed up at City Hall for rallies, bombarded our friends and family with petitions to sign, and literally turned every conversation back to the city budget.

This spring, many of us battled again.

We were tired, but hopeful.

The Mamdani Administration had promised significant investments in parks and green infrastructure, and we hoped our fight for community composting would finally be heard…

And it was.

For the first time since 2023, New York City passed a budget that includes funding for the NYC Community Compost Network.

HUGE. HUGE. HUGE. WIN.

Compost education, including the Master Composter Certification Program, will be funded. Community gardens with compost bins will have resources. And composting-curious green spaces may even become compost sites themselves.

I love to win, but this win feels so much bigger.

It’s a beginning.

A new beginning for compost to become common knowledge, a common science, and hopefully a common practice.

The work is just starting…

And I couldn’t be more thrilled!

With grit & gratitude,

Jess Frost, Master Composter

Co-Coordinator, MSCG Communication Committee

A Budget Win Worth Celebrating