Property owners and landlords in New York City can now be fined $25 or more if residents are found throwing a banana peel in the trash. As of April 1, all New Yorkers must separate organic waste from the rest of their trash, similar to how metal, glass, paper, and plastic is set aside for recycling.

This is how the city is encouraging participation in its curbside composting program, where food waste is collected weekly by the sanitation department, same as the trash and recycling.

Getting New Yorkers onboard with composting will take time — and effort. When it comes to diverting food waste from landfills by composting it instead, New York lags far behind other large U.S. cities. The city recovered less than 5 percent of eligible households’ organic waste in the 2024 fiscal year. The fines announced this month are designed to boost compliance; in the first week of April, the New York City Department of Sanitation, or DSNY, issued nearly 2,000 tickets for allegedly failing to separate organics.

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