New York's Staten Island Compost Facility undergoes expansion

Ahead of New York’s curbside composting program rollout, the New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) Staten Island Compost Facility has undergone an expansion that DSNY says will increase the facility’s capacity by nearly 2,000 percent. The expansion includes new equipment, known as an aerated static pile, which exposes all sides of precompost material piles to air and moisture to speed up the composting process without the need for daily turning and repositioning.

“Over the last decade, the department of sanitation has produced hundreds of millions of pounds of finished compost here on Staten Island, which, today, is in parks, gardens and yards in every corner of the city,” DSNY Commissioner Jessica Tisch says.

“The goal of New York City’s curbside composting program—the largest, easiest ever—is to create beneficial use for material that used to do nothing except feed rats and produce methane. As service reaches all New Yorkers this year, this new expansion means more food waste turned into usable compost."

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Previously, food waste brought to the Staten Island Compost Facility was processed in large piles known as windrows, which took six to eight months to break down into finished compost. The expansion, an aerated static pile system set up across 16 temperature- and moisture-controlled concrete bays, cuts that time in half while boosting the facility’s capacity to process food waste from 3 million pounds per year to 62.4 million pounds per year, DSNY says. The facility also can process 147 million pounds of yard waste annually, bringing the facility’s total capacity to 209.4 million pounds of incoming material per year.

According to DSNY, the facility has produced approximately 42 million pounds of finished compost annually over the last several years, 60 percent of which is sold to landscapers, and 40 percent is given away to community groups, parks and residents. DSNY expects the amount of compost produced and given away to increase with the facility’s expanded capacity.

This expansion comes as New York’s curbside composting program scales citywide. The program is currently available in all of Brooklyn and Queens, and will be available across the entire city in October.