New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already made many drastic changes in the city, from banning smoking in parks and restaurants, trying to curb soda consumption, and encouraging bike riding as a mainstream mode of transportation, and he’s at it again. This time, Bloomberg has dreams of requiring New Yorkers to gather and separated their food scraps for composting.
For years, the NYC government considered the city far too large and dense to even consider domestic food recycling from homes, as San Francisco and Seattle have. However, recent pilot programs have demonstrated that city residents are not only interested in the program but very willing to participate.
In fact, the Bloomberg administration will be announcing plans to use a composting plant to handle 100,000 tons of food scraps a year – approximately 10% of NYC’s residential food waste.
The administration anticipates a huge increase in food recycling and envisions a city in which food waste is gathered and recycled in order to turn it into biogas which could then be used to generate electricity.
If all goes according to plan, experts anticipate that within a few years, recycling food waste will be mandatory.
