NYC Landlords Fume Over New Composting Fines, Say They Expect Them to be Dumpster Divers

By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

On Tuesday, New York City’s $25 fines will take effect for failure to follow the new composting laws– which require residents to separate food and yard scraps from their garbage. As reported by the NY Post, landlords are fuming about it, complaining that the responsibility is for the residents but as landlords they will incur the fines.

In apartment buildings, if residents just continue to chuck food remnants, coffee or chicken bones into the regular trash via the garbage chute, the landlord will be fined. This leaves maintenance staffers on the hook to go dumpster diving, property owners contend. “We don’t think that forcing hard-working building supers to be elbow-deep sorting through tenants’ garbage — turning building maintenance into a daily dumpster dive — is where the government should be focusing their energy and resources right now,”

Kenny Burgos, the New York Apartment Association CEO and former Bronx state rep, told The Post, “The city has tossed us a mess without gloves.”

The Big Apple composting law went into effect in October as part of the Sanitation Department’s ongoing war on rats. Burgos and local property owners have been protesting the law, warning that the “level of anonymity” by residents in apartment buildings means the actual burden for sorting compost will fall on building management.

As per the Post, apartment buildings with four or more units were required to add an extra bin specifically for composting, similar to how recycling is sorted. New Yorkers have never been very good even at recycling. Less than half of paper and cardboard that can be recycled in the city actually is, and only roughly 41% of plastic, glass, metal and cartons actually gets recycled by residents, per a study released by Sanitation last year. Landlords were never fined for this, however. The composting fine imposed on the landlord essentially makes the managers responsible to sort residents’ garbage.

Expecting the management to supervise and make sure all leaf or yard waste and food scraps are placed in composting bins, or pay a fine.

“I challenge the people who passed this law and are trying to implement it on the backs of the housing people in the city of New York to spend two weeks sorting through garbage to see how well it works, especially in a multifamily building with a huge garbage chute,” fumed John Crotty, who manages multiple buildings across NYC. “They don’t care bout the employees who work in these buildings at all,” he said of city officials. “It is an impossible standard — it is detached from reality.” He slammed the law as “ill-conceived,” saying some tenants just won’t compost, and they won’t change their ways because the fine is not on them.

A sanitation spokesman responded in an email saying: “Every building in NYC handles trash differently, but for decades they have ALL been required to sort their recyclables — and now they are required to sort their compostable material as well,” wrote Spokesman Vincent Gragnani. “Whether that means bins on every floor or bins in one common area such as a basement would be up to the building management. The bottom line is that food and yard waste must be separated from trash and put out on recycling day so that we can turn it into finished compost or clean energy.”