Top: Image courtesy New York State Pollution Prevention Institute
In 2023, the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I) convened three experts from across the U.S. who represented multifamily housing food waste diversion programs in Austin, Texas, and New York City. “Within the broader context of designing, launching, and maintaining effective diversion programs in multifamily composting initiatives, the experts shared effective strategies to engage tenants and enable long-term participation for program success,” explains NYSP2I, which regularly works with communities and housing providers across New York State to support food scraps diversion initiatives like these through technical assistance, applied research, and municipal toolkits.
The City of Austin has a Universal Recycling Ordinance (URO) that began requiring food scraps collection from multifamily buildings in the fall of 2024, following a successful six-month pilot. Existing organics recycling program and policy frameworks were leveraged during the pilot, which included eight multifamily properties throughout Austin. “Having the URO in place, we had this precedent for mandating recycling,” explains Elizabeth Nelson with Austin Resource Recovery. “It was a lot easier to tack on organics diversion to that existing policy and the existing structure for educating residents.”
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) served as another expert for the NYSP2I project. Key to the launch of NYCHA’s program was learning about the waste collection and process flow within its buildings — “addressing how food waste gets out of an apartment, to an interim storage location, to the end location for processing, and every touch point in between,” according to Katy Burgio, senior program manager for waste-related capital projects at NYCHA.
Two blogs have been created by NYSP2I that capture the learnings. Before Diving In covers the foundational design elements to establishing food scraps diversion programs for multifamily buildings. The second blog, Engaging Tenants, released in November, explores ways of engaging residents and driving participation. Top takeaways in the Engaging Tenants blog are:
- Resident champions improve engagement but aren’t always required for success.
- Clear education, simple tools (like kitchen caddies), and consistent signage are key.
- Start small, expect to adapt, and work closely with haulers on contamination management.
- Don’t wait — launch, learn, and continuously improve.
