Since April 1, all NYC residents must dispose of organic material like food scraps, food-soiled paper and yard waste separately from the rest of their trash, according to the city’s Department of Sanitation.
While New Yorkers might have already settled into the routine of separating food scraps from trash by now, plenty still have concerns around potential smells attracting bugs, mice and other pests indoors, and questions about what they can do to avoid the issue altogether.
Smells have been a concern for many since the composting program started, but disposing of food scraps separately can actually be less smelly overall since it’s not mixed in with other garbage, said Lily Pollans, a former city planner turned waste management expert at Hunter College.
“Once it’s in the brown bin, once it’s outside, it’s going to smell just like your trash would have smelled,” she said.
“If you were putting that in your trash can, it would still be food scraps in your house — it’s just in the trash can instead of in a compost bucket,” she said.
Experts and New Yorkers agree the best way to avoid smells is to make sure you’re getting your food scraps out of your kitchen and into a collection bin sooner rather than later.
But not everyone has the ability to make multiple trips a day to a collection bin, especially New Yorkers living in buildings that still don’t have them.
With that in mind, here are some tips to manage space and odor concerns while collecting scraps throughout the day.
Convenience in containers
Keep food scraps in a small reusable container while you’re collecting your scraps for the day. Old food storage containers or plastic bins work just fine, ideally with lids to keep smells contained and bugs out.
“A closed bucket usually does the job,” said Pollans.
If looks or space efficiency are concerns, there are also small compost bins and pails designed to fit neatly on your countertop, though design and pricing can range widely.
Libraries, council members and other community organizations have occasionally distributed free countertop kitchen containers, courtesy of the city Sanitation Department, in the past. While there’s no place to order or request one outright, ask a librarian or council member about availability. For example, a staff member from Manhattan City Council member Shawn Abreu’s office told Epicenter they have “a few” available.
Storing scraps in a bag in the freezer is another option, according to Pollans. Cognizant that some New York families lack the freezer space for this odor-reducing hack, she advises chopping up food scraps into smaller pieces before storing them in the freezer to help compress discards.
“That’s like an extra layer of work, but I will do that sometimes if I have a watermelon rind or something really big,” she said.
If you have more space — and more people — at home, Umed Maru of the youth climate activism group The Veggie Nuggets recommends keeping multiple small bins at home so there’s always a place to store scraps.
“I live in a pretty big household and I think we just manage,” said Maru, whose six-person household can accumulate a lot of scraps throughout the day, especially when more family members visit. “We’ll either freeze it or just put it in a [curbside] bin like more than once a week.”
Managing odors
Even if the smell of decomposing food can be better contained when it’s not mixed in with a bunch of other trash, bad smells are an inherent part of collecting any kind of waste, and compost is no exception.
Kwesi Joseph, a master composter on Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Harvest New York team, explained that smells in composting come from an imbalance in the ratio of “browns,” or carbon-rich materials like dry leaves and cardboard, and “greens,” or nitrogen-rich materials like fresh fruit rinds and vegetable scraps. Regular New Yorkers collecting food scraps at home have too many greens, which is why scraps can start to stink if left for too long.
As a Brooklyn resident who’s been composting in his family’s backyard for 11 years, Joseph said he balances these and avoids smells in his own compost using dried leaves he collects in the fall.
“So what I used to do is in the fall I would go to the park, I would take a shopping cart, I would make like six trips and I would collect 15 to 20 bags of leaves, and I would use that as a reserve for the year,” he said. “That’s the trick to be able to get rid of the smell in compost, because you’re never going to have enough browns.”
Pollans said balancing browns and greens is something more relevant to home composters than the average New Yorker collecting food scraps at home, especially if you’re not handling the scraps once they’re in the brown bin. However, Joseph offers that sawdust has the same odor-reducing effect on compost as the dried leaves do because it slows the decomposition process.
A similar tip to sawdust is sprinkling pine pellets in your food scrap bin, which can absorb moisture and help mask odors while being less messy than sawdust.
For those who are sensitive to smells and not interested in messing with additives, Pollans recommends just getting a food scrap bin with space for a carbon filter that can absorb odors and be replaced as needed.
She said some people even use dehydrator machines to pull the moisture out of food scraps so they don’t stink in the first place.
“It does take away the smell aspect, but it’s a bigger piece of equipment that’s probably not suitable for most New York households,” she added.
Throwing it out
Countertop food scrap containers can be lined with small plastic, paper and compostable bags, which are all ok to toss into the larger brown compost collection bins, according to sanitation officials. However, Pollans recommends avoiding plastic for both practical and environmental reasons, since machines that are meant to separate plastic bags from food scraps don’t actually work very well.
“The food scraps — it basically just looks like garbage,” she said. “There’s so much contamination in it.”
“I have a lot of concerns about the amount of plastic that is in the waste stream and in our bodies, and I think it’s really silly to put the food scraps into plastic,” Pollans said. “It’s just completely unnecessary and honestly kind of inefficient.”
So stick to the paper and compostable bags, or just forego them altogether and rinse out or wipe down your countertop container regularly.
My building doesn’t have a brown compost bin yet. What can I do?
While composting has been mandatory for all residents in New York City since April 1, the DSNY said it has “extended the outreach and education period for buildings with fewer than 30 units” to give residents more time to properly adapt and learn how to sort their organic waste.
This leaves many of the city’s smaller buildings, whose landlords, superintendents or property managers have delayed participating in the program, without large brown compost bins.
Maru suggests reaching out to city services like 311 if this is a problem for you.
“Pressure your landlord, organize your neighbors, get your building to participate,” said Pollens. “If that’s not happening, and you have to keep it in your house for a week, then, really, the freezer is the best option.”
There are other places where food scraps can be separately discarded beyond residential brown bins, like smart compost bins and food scrap drop-off sites.
Just like residential bins, any food or plant materials including “meat, bones, dairy, prepared foods, greasy uncoated paper plates and pizza boxes, and house plants and flowers” can be thrown out at smart compost bins. There are about 400 of these bins around the city, according to an October 2024 statement from the mayor’s office. A free app, available for Android and iOS from the DSNY, is required to open these bins, which can be accessed 24/7.
City-run services aren’t the only places to throw out food scraps. Many community gardens, parks, schools and nonprofit organizations run their own composting programs and serve as food scrap drop-off sites, accepting certain kinds of food scraps and plant waste from neighbors.
While Maru has compost bins at home, he said he and his family sometimes take their food scraps to local drop off sites.
Unlike smart compost bins and residential compost pickup, most of these drop-off sites can’t accept “meat, fish, bones, dairy, fat, oil or greasy prepared food,” so err on the side of caution or try checking in with organizers before visiting.
