Compost Regenerates NYC’s Economy, Growing Green Jobs for Young People
Zayneb Saad, now a graduating senior in media communication at Lehman College in the Bronx, was 14 the first time she worked in a community garden.
Paid through the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), Saad picked up power tools on the “sustainable design” team in the environmental program at Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis), completing construction projects with other students at Frank White Memorial garden in Harlem. She’s since continued working with BroSis, assuming progressively greater leadership, and now a fellowship with the 1K Compost System campaign.
“I like working outside, being in the environment,” she said. “Physical labor, like the shoveling and lifting, helps build strength and a sense of agency - I can do this myself if need be and can teach it to others.” Gaining hands-on skills at BroSis, combined with leadership experience, has helped Saad build confidence and her resumé.
Get to know New York’s community composting programs, and you’ll find stories like Saad’s across the five boroughs. Because chopping food scraps and turning over steaming compost piles has benefits that go beyond reducing pollution and enriching the soil in urban gardens.
Organizations like BroSis, BK Rot, and East New York Farms (pictured above) put young people in the lead collecting and processing tons of food scraps from surrounding neighborhoods while starting their careers. These and other groups recently funded by the City Council often center youth and community development in their work, whether through paid positions or training programs.
While New York is thought to have the highest concentration of composters in the United States, data on groups and labor is limited. In 2014, the City's Department of Sanitation (DSNY) estimated that the city’s hundreds of composting sites were 78 percent volunteer-run. Today, paid composting roles remain limited, but may be growing. Compost is a focus for over 15 organizations in the city. each representing jobs in collection, processing, and education. Professionals in other roles, from teachers to urban farmers, also incorporate compost in their work.
Unlike industrial organic waste systems, community composting reinvests the majority of its inputs, including dollars, back into our neighborhoods. The Institute for Local Self Reliance estimates that for every 10,000 tons of organic material processed, community composting generates 6.2 jobs, compared to just one and two jobs in incineration and landfills, respectively. They’re jobs available at the neighborhood level and cultivate a wide diversity of skills, typically pairing compost collection and processing with education and outreach.
Such jobs can be critical for New Yorkers ages 18 to 24, who are experiencing the highest rate of unemployment in our city. At 13.6 percent, youth unemployment remains 5.3 points higher than it was before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic; it hits even harder in Black and brown neighborhoods.
For youth looking to explore green stewardship jobs, there can be barriers if they grew up in the city, such as needing a driver’s license or prior experience in agriculture. This is an area where community composting really shines. While not everyone who works with compost organizations is pursuing a green career, physically active jobs like composting can draw young people in, and they benefit when those jobs are connected with diverse opportunities.
At Success Community Garden, for example, Ora Goodwin has created paid opportunities for youth in her neighborhood of East New York for the past decade. Their jobs include construction, event planning, and landscaping. Goodwin directly funds jobs through her Goodwin Sunshine Foundation and partners with organizations like SYEP and the City Parks Foundation to employ between 50 to 60 youth each year.
Echo Hertzberg, who joined the Lower East Side Ecology Center this past fall as a community engagement coordinator, appreciates that composting “has a low- barrier to entry.” As they explained during a recent training, compost requires relatively accessible skill sets that are often easy to learn, apply, and teach to others, which can help people enter the workforce and access a range of tangential training and experience for career growth.
(A broad cross-section of such community composting groups will take part in the March 15th Crazy for Composting conference organized by Bronx Green-Up at the New York Botanical Garden. This year’s theme is “Soil for the Soul: Inspiring Youth to Learn and Lead Through Composting.”)
Despite its benefits, however, New York’s community composting faces a big challenge: funding. In 2023, the Department of Sanitation cut at least 115 jobs in composting when it defunded the NYC Compost Project. That included permanent roles like Hertzberg’s that make the temporary part-time jobs, like Saad’s, possible.
While City Council members used discretionary budgets to restore some of the funding for many compost groups this fiscal year, public investment in New York’s community compost services remains tentative. There is currently no requirement that the city or state make investments in community-based organics collection and processing.
Intro 696, a bill sponsored by Councilmember Sandy Nurse, addresses that shortfall. It would require 180,000-ton local organics processing capacity in each borough. When implemented, it would create roughly 350 jobs across the city, according to a report released by the Brooklyn borough president’s office. This kind of policy could put much-needed legislative structure under our local green economy and encourage green stewardship jobs.
Of course, some programs can use a profit model if their compost (the product) and composting (the service) are viable in local markets. Others, like Success Community Garden, rely partly on private donations. But in New York, where land is expensive, financial resources are inequitably distributed, and organic waste separation – now mandatory – is currently below five percent, we should calculate the cost-benefit of paying to export organics to landfills versus paying local stewards for the essential labor of using organic materials for social, economic, and ecological good.
We all benefit from community composting through healthier environments and communities, more equitable greener economies, and greater participation in citywide organics separation from public education. And perhaps most importantly, community composting can help young people like Zayneb Saad gain confidence, skills, and economic mobility as they prepare to become the next generation of city leaders.
Audrey Jenkins is a research assistant at the Center for New York City Affairs. Audrey holds a Master’s in Public Health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and is pursuing her doctorate in Public and Urban Policy at The New School with a focus on infrastructures of ecological democracy.
Photo by: Audrey Jenkins.