If you like our site, mark us as a preferred source on Google — so you’ll see our articles more often in search!
★Mark us as a preferred sourceNew York City is significantly expanding the range of businesses that must divert their organic waste away from landfills and incinerators. On June 30, 2026, the City Council passed the local law known as Int. No. 31-A, which eliminates one of the most important limitations of the existing rules: the size-based thresholds. The law will take effect even without Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s signature.
What exactly does the law do?
Section 16-306.1 of the New York City administrative code has, since 2013, required so-called “covered establishments” to separate and process their organic waste. Until now the system applied to a narrow group and used size or capacity thresholds throughout: only food manufacturers with at least 25,000 square feet of floor area, wholesalers above 20,000 square feet, food stores above 10,000 square feet, or arenas and stadiums with a seating capacity of at least 15,000 fell under its scope.
Int. No. 31-A essentially removes these thresholds. Under the amendment, the definition of “covered establishment” now includes — without any size restriction — every food manufacturer, food wholesaler, retail food store, arena and stadium, food service establishment, food preparation establishment and catering establishment. The scope is further broadened with new categories: sponsors of temporary public events, mobile food commissaries, and — as an open, rule-definable category — “any other commercial establishment that generates revenue from the handling of material that can be broken down into organic waste.”
At the same time, the law phases out several old, complicated or outdated requirements. It removes, for example, the obligation to display a window sign identifying the carter, and it repeals subdivision (h) of the section as well as the separate rule tied to hotels. The legislative intent is to simplify the system: as Jeremy Edwards, deputy press secretary for the mayor, put it, the law “will save businesses money while removing confusing and outdated requirements regarding who is and is not required to comply.”
A conditional, phased rollout
Importantly, the obligation does not automatically apply to everyone at once. The law places the judgment in the hands of the commissioner of the Department of Sanitation (DSNY): at least annually, the commissioner must evaluate the processing capacity within the designated area and the cost of processing organic waste (through composting, aerobic or anaerobic digestion). Only if the commissioner determines that sufficient capacity exists and that its cost is competitive with the cost of disposal by landfill or incineration may covered establishments be designated by rule. Designated establishments must then comply no later than six months after the designation.
The law also sets a concrete timeline: the commissioner must designate additional covered establishments by December 1, 2026, and businesses so designated must meet the requirements starting June 1, 2027 — or on the final implementation date of the commercial waste zone in which the establishment is located, whichever is later.
The local law itself becomes law 30 days after the June passage, and then takes effect a further 120 days later. DSNY Commissioner Gregory Anderson expressed support for the bill at the council hearing and indicated his eagerness to meet the deadline.
What do affected businesses have to do?
Designated establishments must choose among three options for their organic waste: they can arrange for a licensed private carter to collect it for composting or digestion; they can transport the waste themselves to a processing facility (with the appropriate registration); or they can process it on site through in-vessel composting or digestion. In addition, they must provide separate bins wherever organic waste is generated, and post instructions on how to properly separate it.
As a new element, the carters that collect organic waste (the awardees of the commercial waste zone system) must provide businesses with information about opportunities to donate excess edible food. The law also expressly excludes from the definition of “organic waste” food donated to a third party, food sold to farmers as feedstock, and meat by-products sold to a rendering company — meaning the regulation also encourages food rescue.
The bigger picture: capacity is the bottleneck
New York City’s move is not without precedent. In 2024, New York State — with Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature — already enacted an obligation for large generators: businesses producing more than one ton per week became subject to the law this past January, while those producing more than half a ton per week will fall under it in January 2028. Affected businesses must donate edible food and must recycle their scraps if they are within 25 miles of an organics recycler.
New York City itself has long sought ways to incentivize diversion: residents have been required to separate their organic waste since April 1, 2025, but the capture rate of the curbside program has remained low. The real stakes in the current debate, therefore, are not so much declaring the obligation but the processing capacity. It is no accident that the regulation ties the expansion of the obligation to the commissioner’s evaluation of capacity and price. The council also raised its support for the community composting program to $5.2 million (funding partners such as Big Reuse, BK Rot and Earth Matter) and secured roughly $1 million for the city’s botanical gardens to do similar work.
Running in parallel is another, more contested proposal (Int. 369) that would require the establishment of 180,000 tons of annual composting capacity in each borough. Commissioner Anderson has, for now, called this “impossible,” though he indicated a willingness to work with the council on expanding capacity.
Environmental groups welcomed the passage. Eric Goldstein, New York City environment director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the law “closes a loophole that allowed businesses producing significant amounts of food scraps and yard waste to dump their trash into problematic landfills and incinerators.” He added: “Smart businesses will save money, since finished compost has actual market value and city rules require waste carters to charge a lower rate for picking up compostables than ordinary trash.” Council Majority Leader Shaun Abreu, the bill’s lead sponsor, said the law is “good for the environment and good for the bottom line.”
What does this mean for us?
Although New York operates within its own particular system, the underlying logic will feel familiar to European and Hungarian professionals. Under Article 22 of the EU Waste Framework Directive, the separate collection of bio-waste has been mandatory across the entire Union since December 31, 2023 — meaning that here, too, separation is the baseline expectation, not an option. In Hungary, the infrastructure for household and institutional bio-waste collection is being built out gradually within the concession-based waste management model launched in 2023.
The key lesson of the New York case is that the obligation alone is not enough: the city legislature deliberately tied the activation of the rule to the availability of competitively priced processing capacity. This holds for the Hungarian situation as well — without developing composting and biogas plant capacity and a market for the resulting compost, even the strictest separation requirement will struggle to translate into genuine diversion. The other transferable idea is simplifying the system and building in the top tier of the waste hierarchy, food rescue: New York leaves it to the carters to inform businesses about donation, and removes donated food from the scope of the regulation altogether — a form of incentive worth considering here as well.
Sources:
- Facilities Dive / Waste Dive – New York City to expand businesses subject to organic waste requirements (July 10, 2026);
- text of local law Int. No. 31-A (NYC Council);
- European Commission – Implementation of the Waste Framework Directive.
