The New Yorker - 09.03.2020

30 THENEWYORKER, MARCH 9, 2020

South Korea recycles ninety-five per cent of its food waste, a marked contrast to the dismal rate in New York City.

LETTER FROM SEOUL

COMPLETE TRASH

Composting could get us out of the mess we’ve made.

BY RIVKA GALCHEN

ILLUSTRATION BY GIACOMO GAMBINERI

T

rash is new. During the nineteenth
century, New York was dirty but
much of its garbage consisted of left-
overs and scraps and other items to reuse.
Sunday’s roast became Monday’s hash;
Monday’s bread became Wednesday’s
bread pudding. Pigs roamed the streets,
eating old lettuce and radish tops. “Swill
children” went from house to house, col-
lecting food scraps that they sold to

farmers as fertilizer and animal feed.
Bones became glue. Old grease was
turned into tallow candles, or mixed
with ashes to make soap. Disposable
packaging was almost nonexistent.
In nearly every decade of the nine-
teenth century, the city’s population dou-
bled. New York began to dump its ex-
cess into the Atlantic Ocean. In 1895,
George Waring, a former military officer,
became sanitation commissioner. “Col-
onel Waring’s broom ... saved more

lives than a squad of doctors,” the so-

cial reformer and journalist Jacob Riis

wrote, of the man who put sanitation

workers in white suits. Waring made

New York households and businesses

separate out food waste and ashes; he

diverted horse manure for use as fertil-

izer. Food waste was turned into soap,

grease, or compost, or carted to pig farms

in New Jersey. Some of the ash became

cinder blocks. Some went for expand-

ing the footprint of Rikers Island. Three

years after his appointment, Waring

died, of yellow fever. His sorting pro-

gram continued until the First World

War, when it was abandoned because

of labor and material shortages. By 1918,

the city was again dumping waste into

the ocean. Or depositing it in landfills.

The story of New York’s garbage hasn’t

changed as much in the past century as

you might imagine, given that we now

have the technology to 3-D-print a baby

Yoda, or to run a car on old vegetable

oil. Paper and plastic are separated, but

recycling of organics—food waste, yard

waste, pretty much anything that rots—

remains voluntary, even though such ma-

terial makes up about a third of New

York’s trash. All but five per cent of the

city’s organic waste goes to landfills.

Organic waste doesn’t just stink when

it’s sent to landfills; it becomes a climate

poison. Yes, we’ve been schooled again

and again in the importance of recy-

cling—by friends, by pious enemies,

even by “Wall-E.” But the recycling of

organics is arguably more important

than that of plastics, metal, or paper.

Composting transforms raw organic

waste into a humus-like substance that

enriches soil and enhances carbon cap-

ture. In landfills, starved of oxygen, de-

composing organics release methane, a

greenhouse gas whose warming effects,

in the long run, are fifty-six times those

of CO 2. The United States has greater

landfill emissions than any other coun-

try, the equivalent of thirty-seven mil-

lion cars on the road each year.

Last April, the New York State leg-

islature enacted laws requiring large busi-

nesses and institutions to recycle their

food waste, but New York City is exempt