The trash police are back!
Mamdani’s management has begun quietly slapping New Yorkers with hefty fines for throwing food scraps in the trash instead of compost, the report said.
The Department of Sanitation has issued 516 summonses so far this year – ending a temporary moratorium on composting permits that former Mayor Eric Adams put in place last spring.
It also means that the city has made at least $ 12,900 for those who are not willing to follow the compost order, which went into effect last April.
Summonses start at $25 for first time offenders who own smaller homes – but can go up to $300 for repeat offenders who own properties with more than 8 units.
The 516 tickets were more than 13 times the amount issued from May to December 2025, when Adams decided to penalize properties that repeatedly failed to separate their food scraps from their regular trash, records show.
DSNY issued 42,844 compost-related warnings from April to December, compared to just four so far this year, records show.
Enforcement is expected to increase as the weather warms and the mandate nears its first birthday, but some say New Yorkers aren’t ready to fully convert to composting laws.
Staten Island council members David Carr, Frank Morano and Kamila Hanks wrote a letter to the Department of Transportation this week saying that while they support the plan, they believe the fines are still a long way off.
“The current enforcement approach risks penalizing citizens who have not received adequate notice, education or guidance about how the system works,” the trio wrote.
Politicians have called for the city to improve access to education, including ensuring that waste separation is affordable.
The DSNY began enforcing the law last April, issuing 4,339 fines that month before Adams — who was flirting with a re-election bid — chose to temporarily postpone enforcement following widespread anger and confusion over the guidelines.
Landlords and property managers have slammed the mandate as untenable, saying it will force their workers to scrounge to sort out food scraps their tenants – who benefit from the anonymity afforded by scavengers – refuse to clean up.
But the program was successful in the first few weeks before Adams’ intervention, with DSNY collecting record amounts of matured material each week.
In its first week, the program collected 3.8 million pounds of food grains – the equivalent of the weight of eight and a half Statues of Liberty.
