Crafting workshop at Queens Botanical Garden sparks talk on composting
NEW YORK -- At the Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing, turmeric, coffee, and cabbage boil away in big pots. But the stew is not for eating.
Donated food scraps are becoming natural dyes, bringing color to canvas tote bags and sparking conversations about sustainability.
It's part of the garden's summer series "Crafting with Scraps," which brings New Yorkers together to explore an urban oasis and share knowledge about Earth's wonders.
The workshops come amid a rollout of the city's curbside composting program, beginning in the borough of Queens. Orange peels, chicken bones, and even pizza boxes are compostable.
"We like to say, if you cook or you grow it, you can throw it," Sanitation Department commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
She said the program is off to a promising start in controlling the roughly eight million pounds of food waste New Yorkers produce daily.
"Instead of sending our food waste to landfill, where it sits and produces methane gas for decades, we want to compost it. So we want to turn it into soil, or we want to digest it and make renewable energy out of it," she said.
While composting twigs and leaves from the yard is already required in Queens, composting scraps from the kitchen is set to become a citywide mandate in the next two years. Until then, the city wants to help New Yorkers get familiar with the process. Tisch said it's simple.
"All you have to do is put it in a container and set it out on your recycling day, and the Department of Sanitation will come and collect it," she said.
The Queens Botanical Garden will host free composting educational programming throughout August.
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