BY TEQUILA MINSKY | It’s Saturday morning at the northern end of the Greenmarket in Tribeca — Greenwich near Duane Street — as a steady trickle of neighbors carrying paper or plastic bags dump their kitchen refuse. Bin after bin provided by GrowNYC and NYC Sanitation are filling up. This a city Compost Collection drop-off site — one of 16 attached to a Greenmarket in Manhattan. Additionally, there are nine Compost On-The-Go drop-off sites from 96th Street north, which are part of the network.
Thanksgiving, family, lots of eating, means lots of organic scraps … all those coffee grounds, peelings, egg shells, worn-out flowers, and so much more.
“We’re anticipating more organic waste this weekend and will be bringing in additional bins,” said the GrowNYC staff member while directing the offerings from one Tribeca neighbor. Compost is accepted here until 1 p.m.
What’s accepted? Fruit and vegetable scraps, rinds, coffee grounds, filters, and paper tea bags, bread and grains, eggshells, nutshells, corncobs, food-soiled paper towels and napkins, shredded newspaper sawdust and wood shavings from untreated wood, stale beans, flour, and spices cut or dried flowers, houseplants and potting soil, feathers. Weekly, people save organic refuse in the fridge or freezer to avoid any smells.
There’s a list of items NOT accepted including meats and fish scraps, plastics, oil, kitty litter, bones, greasy food scraps, and diseased plants, to name a few.
The Tribeca Greenmarket stretches parallel to Washington Market Park on the Greenwich Street sidewalk. Its hours are 8 a.m.-3 p.m., Saturdays year-round, (and now selling, selling breads and pastries, fowl and meats, cheeses, and winter greens and root vegetables) with Compost Collection from 8 a.m. – 1 p.m.
The Tribeca Wednesday Greenmarket has fewer purveyors and operates June through November, however, Wednesday’s Compost Collection (as well as a clothing collection) runs year round, 8 a.m.-1 p.m. For other locations check grownyc.org/compost/locations.
