De Blasio to Require Some Hotels, Arenas to Begin Composting

The de Blasio administration will take a step towards achieving its “zero waste” goal Thursday by proposing a rule requiring about 350 businesses to compost their food scraps.

The rule, which is expected to take up to a year and a half to fully implement, will apply to restaurants at hotels with at least 150 rooms, sports stadiums and arenas, and large food manufacturers and wholesalers. The rule is an outgrowth of a law passed by the City Council two years ago.

The measure is expected to divert about 50,000 tons of waste a year. That's just a small portion of the approximately 1 million tons of commercial food waste that the city produces. But Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia says she wants to make sure this first step is successful and add the city's 24,000 restaurants later.

"We know that we need to do a lot of outreach with this first group,” she said. “And it's not an overwhelming number to do a lot of handholding."

In addition, she said hotels and sports facilities tend to have a “cleaner waste stream,” devoid of plastics and other non-compostable material.

A spokeswoman for the Hotel Association of NYC, Lisa Linden, said in a statement that the group hadn’t had a chance to review the rule and could not comment.

“Our hotels are very environmentally conscious,” she added.

The businesses and others will have a chance to give feedback on the rule over the next six months before it is formally adopted. There will then be a waiting period followed by a grace period, before fines kick in.

Eric Goldstein, New York City Environmental Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said there wouldn’t be enough capacity among the region’s composting facilities to move faster.

“The objective is to solve the chicken and egg problem,” he said. “To make sure there is sufficient capacity to handle organic waste before we are collecting it.”