Join local environmental projects with
Forest Hills Green Team
For more information and to get involved, contact fhgtinc@gmail.com, and come to our monthly Zoom meeting.
Compost drop-off sites return to NYC as curbside collection of organic waste stalls
Metropolitan Avenue clean up this Sunday 6/23
There will be a clean up along Metropolitan Avenue. As you can see from the flyer, a number of our local elected are sponsors and they do show up. If you would want to share your thoughts about community issues, this is a good opportunity to chat with them informally.
Intergenerational discussion celebrating Pride month - This will be held virtually this Wednesday, June 26 starting @ 7 PM. Check this flyer for more information.
Primary voting - Early voting continues to elect local County, State and Judgeships. The actual primary is this Tuesday 6/25. If you want more information about this primary, please email us.
FHGT volunteers ran a weekly food scrap drop off site in partnership with Queens Botanical Gardens and Commonpoint Queens, from August 2021 to May 2024 every Sunday from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM at their food pantry at 108-13 67 Road. It along with many other food scrap dop off sites around the city have been closed due to Mayor Adam's budget cuts.
Yellowstone Beautification Project - Our ongoing landscaping and beautification project on Yellowstone Boulevard between Burns and Austin Street. Contact us if you want to be informed of weeding, planting and watering events.
Metropolitan Avenue Street Care Project - We are partnering with Metro Village, the local business group, to host volunteer clean up events along this busy street.
Educating Students - We have done climate change presentations for the PS 196; the Reform Temple of Forest Hills; Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School (MELS) HS; and Bronx HS of Science. Contact us for one at your school.
Advocacy – We have a long history of advocacy for making curbside composting mandatory and continue public education about this program. We have endorsed candidates for the City Council (Lynn Schulman for Council District 29), as well as for State Assembly and State Senate races. We are working with Councilmember Schulman on planting trees that were allocated by Participatory Budgeting.
Coalitions - FHGT is a member of the Save our Compost coalition, the Borough President’s Urban Sustainability Committee, and the Central Queens Against Hate project.
Upcoming activities for the Forest Hills Green Team
Check this section regularly for upcoming events!
Compost your food scraps & yard waste
Mayor Adams has removed funding for all GrowNYC food scrap drop off sites at NYC farmers markets, as well as for community food scrap drop off sites like ours in Forest Hills. This is a foolish and short sighted decision. While residential buildings - single family homes and apartment buildings - are encouraged to participate in a weekly curbside composting collection on the same day as their recycling pick up, there has been no City agency outreach and education campaign, and there are no penalties for not participating. Mayor Adams has also de-funded the most dedicated composting advocates and programs around the City who have been conducting this public education.
We need some text from NRDC or the Save our Compost Coalition on how horrible Adam's decision is, and what policies a future decent Mayor should enact.
Council Member Shaun Abreu Sounds Alarm on Cuts to Community
Composting in Rally and Executive Budget Hearing
On May 20th, 2024, Council Member Abreu, Chair of the Committee of Sanitation and Solid Waste Management and a broad coalition of advocates from the Save Our Compost Coalition for a rally before a budget hearing with the Finance Committee. Community composting programs have served hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers for decades—collecting millions of pounds of organic waste to divert from landfills and incinerators, educating communities on how to get started with composting, and supporting hundreds of green jobs that keep our city and our planet clean. Now, these groups are in crisis. Despite overwhelming public support for their programming, Mayor Adams’ sweeping budget cuts eliminated funding for community composting groups. GrowNYC is forced to shut down their Food Scrap Collections and lay off 90 green sector workers. City leaders in environmental protection and sanitation agree that community composting is a vital grassroots resource for the city to successfully expand curbside composting this fall and reach its goals of sending zero divertible waste to landfills by 2030. Elimination of compost program funding has happened in NYC previously, and we know that closing programs even temporarily disrupts years of good practices that New Yorkers have built up. Council Member Abreu is asking for $11 million total in funding for community composting, which includes restoring $7.1 million for community composting operations and providing the previously promised $4 million for building out additional community composting processing sites. As the climate crisis accelerates, the last thing NYC should be doing is scraping programs that involve New Yorkers in reducing our carbon emissions, which are essential for making NYC even remotely sustainable.
"With the Mayor pushing for the City of Yes for Housing Opportunities, which will put more pressure on our infrastructure and the recent report from the Department of Sanitation, which indicated that participation in recycling programs is declining, this is the worst time to couple this with closing Community Composting. Save Our Compost now!" - said Mark Laster, Co-Chair of the Forest Hills Green Team.
One third of what New Yorkers throw away is food scraps and yard waste!
Visit the NYC Dept. of Sanitation organic waste collection program.
All Queens residential buildings - single family homes and apartment buildings - receive a weekly Curbside Composting collection on the same day as their recycling pick-up.
- Leaf and yard waste separation from trash is now mandatory.
- Separation of food waste and food-soiled paper from trash is now mandatory.
- The warning period for Queens (and all boroughs as service expands) runs through Spring 2025. Starting Spring 2025, ALL NYC residents will be subject to fines.
Find out more about how and what to compost here.
Store your scraps at home in reusable containers or plastic bags, in either the refrigerator or freezer. If you live in an apartment building that does not participate directly in the City's food scrap collection program, you can take it to:
NYC generates 1 million tons of greenhouse gas from municipal landfills annually. Landfill waste in NYC is 41% organic material that could be turned into compost. Organic material that is buried in a landfill and decomposes in the absence of oxygen - anaerobically - produces the powerful greenhouse gas methane.
When organic material is composted, decomposing with oxygen present, much of the carbon is captured in solid form before it can even escape as carbon dioxide gas. This is one of the simplest and most cost-effective methods of slowing down climate change we can find.
Contact Elected Officials
Click here for a list of elected officials representing our area, and their contact info.
Contact FHGT
Contact us at fhgtinc@gmail.com.
We are based in Forest Hills, New York, United States.