when do christmas hail marys actually work? my time with grownyc's community composting program

On Sunday, December 10th, I made time to volunteer in what might become the penultimate day of GrowNYC's community composting program.

For over a decade, GrowNYC has been operating food scrap drop-off sites to help New Yorkers learn about and then compost more regularly. As of this year, they were operating 52 different drop off locations, which diverted an average of 25 tons of compostable materials form landfills each week.

Throughout this year, I had been volunteering semi-regularly at their Upper West Side 79th St location on Sundays, and it'd truly become one of the highlights of my last year in the city. I don't think I ever felt as much part of New York as when I was there, smashing offerings down with a shovel to make more room in the bin, making pleasant small talk and dispensing advice on what could be thrown in. Not only was I really doing something actively environmental, I was also getting to meet New Yorkers from all walks of life - classic neighborhood eccentrics, environmentally-conscious yuppies, plant parent graduate students, Law & Order character actors, rent stabilized hold outs etc. It really felt like one of those rare programs that everyone could use, that helped save our environment in a more inclusive manner.

And it was now on the chopping block. Earlier this year, in response to "unsustainable levels of spending on asylum seekers," Mayor Eric Adams had directed all city agencies to reduce at least 5% of their budgets by November. This had already resulted in big cuts to library hours, to school programs, to parks and sanitation, and... to community composting. Critics of the logic behind the cuts have pointed out that 1) that NYC could afford these programs with the extra $8 billion more in revenue made this year than projected, 2) that the cuts being ordered are far greater than what helping migrants actually costs, and that 3) the math wasn't quite mathing about why migrant help pricing was so much higher in this city than anywhere else.

And we haven't even touched upon New York's astronomical police budget, an ongoing hallmark of a controversy for the Adams administration.

On the day I volunteered, we were still handing out flyers imploring compost fans to sign the petition to keep the program alive. The City Council was supposed to vote on the cut the next day, and despite a lot of public and political support, the outlook seemed shaky.

The salaried staff at my post, many who had been at this neighborhood site for years, were demoralized. "I feel so exhausted," one of them admitted to me, "We've been harping on this for weeks now and I just don't have it in me anymore."

I was a fresh blood volunteer though, and I really liked this spot. Taking a moment to remind everyone there to scrap that this wonderful service could be gone in 2024 was the least I could do. And it was a good thing too - of the several hundred people who swung by, many were surprised it was stopping by next week.

~

Oh? When will you be back after the holidays then?

We're not coming back. The community composting program is getting cut entirely and nobody's going to be paid to run it.

So is it just the one here then? Can I go to a different collection site?

No, it's all of us. If you want to keep composting, there's these orange smart-bins that have popped up around the city now. They fill up quickly so I recommend getting there in the mornings. You use this app to see which ones are still ava-

But I don't have a smartphone! I'm too old for this techno stuff.

Yeah, that's tough. There's also the brown bin recycling program that you could get your building to partici-

Ha! Good luck getting my building to do anything. I remember the brown bins, they went away during the pandemic and never came back.

I get you. I'm sorry... maybe you can find a neighboring building that has one and sneak your food scraps in...

I don't get it, wasn't there just a city-wide composting mandate?

Yes, isn't that a laugh? Curbside composting was supposed to come to every city neighborhood by the end of this year. Instead, we're saying goodbye to all of this.

Is this really expensive to do?

No, not at all. This costs about $2 million to run a year, literally a drop in the bucket. Adams is blaming it on the migrants but nobody knows why they're costing this city so much more than anywhere else, and his projected budget shortfalls hasn't stopped him from doing stupid projects like the MTA Police Robot he now has running around Times Square at night, you know the one he said is allegedly going to cost the city less money because it can work below minimum wage but right now it needs two human handlers to accompany it everywhere.

Yeah, we all agree that robot is fucking dumb.

~

It was cathartic seeing everyone as upset as I was to learn about the potential closure of the program. Several participants got out their phones immediately to call their representatives. Others added their name to the petition, even though it was the last day before the vote, just in case.

While gently nudging them to sign or call, I joked that we were hoping for a Christmas miracle - that Lifetime movie moment where in the 11th hour, the day is saved, a tv special deus ex machina.

And lo and behold, what happens?

I have no idea what happened with the city council vote - I'd been refreshing pages for news as I got on the plane for holiday travel and nothing ever came up. I squealed when I saw the headline.

Let's not forget, this is a stop gap measure. It’s only until June. And it's absolutely bonkers for a private citizen to need to step up and fund something that has been a beneficial part of the city's services for decades. Requiring essential needs to be paid for by the kindness of strangers is a sign of a failing state, and we must continue to fight the Adams administration on this and the many other shortsighted austerity-for-security deductions its been trying to push through.

But after a last 2023 quarter of watching wonderful things die, I am so relieved to know I still can count on smashing trash and chatting up the bevy of characters that swing by on a Sunday.

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