Top: New York City’s Big Apple Compost is manufactured at Staten Island Composting. Photo courtesy of WeCare Denali

Aerated static piles at Community Compost’s facility in Kerhonkson, NY. Image courtesy Community Compost Company

The 8th annual New York State (NYS) Organics Summit will take place April 5-6, 2022 in Albany at the Albany Capital Center. The event will be a hybrid and attendees can participate in person or virtually. The Summit is organized by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and the NYS Association for Reduction, Reuse and Recycling. With the state’s Food Donation & Food Scraps Recycling Law in effect as of January 1, 2022, Summit presentations will get into the nitty gritty of compliance with the new law, highlight case studies of existing food recovery and food waste prevention programs in NYS, and cover recycling options, including community and large-scale composting, and codigestion of food waste. A session organized by BioCycle, Source Separation and Its Impact on Product Quality, explores the trade-offs between human and mechanical source separation methods, how effective they are at removing contaminants and their ultimate impact on the quality of the end product. Another session, Addressing a Changing Climate with Organics Management, will discuss NYS’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the progress of its waste advisory panel and the recently released recommendations.

The Summit also includes a tour of the Town of Bethlehem Composting Facility, including the infrastructure and operational steps it has taken to transition from two decades of processing yard trimmings to now incorporating food scraps. Early bird registration ends March 15.