Forest Hills' New Composting Site Is A Place For Civic Engagement

FOREST HILLS, QUEENS — For the Forest Hills Green Team, a volunteer-led initiative that just helped launch the neighborhood’s newest compost drop-off site, composting is not just an environmentally responsible form of waste management — it’s a building-block of civic engagement.

“You can’t go straight from A to Z, you’ve got to show people how things are connected, how putting your banana peels in a composting project will help lead to environmental justice,” said Mark Laster, chair of FHGT, noting that composting is a concrete way to help people gain awareness about more abstract environmental topics, including energy, climate, and building issues.

That’s part of the reason why the FHGT composting site at MacDonald Park — which is open every Sunday from 10: a.m. to 1 p.m. as of May 16 in partnership with the Queens Botanical Garden and Friends of MacDonald Park — includes two tables: One for dropping off food scraps, and another with materials about voter registration, ranked choice voting, and redistricting.

“We need to help educate the community, and I think education will hopefully lead to policy,” explained Laster.

Civic education through ‘neighbors talking to neighbors’

Civic education has been a cornerstone of the FHGT efforts since they launched in 2018.

The group’s first neighborhood beautification projects and environmental advocacy-focused events were all tied to helping people in Forest Hills get involved in their neighborhood as they learned about environmental issues.

“It’s about neighbors talking to neighbors,” said Laster.

For City Council candidate, and activist, Aleda Gagarin — who is running to represent District 29 including Forest Hills — local engagement is ultimately a way for people in Forest Hills to feel more connected with social issues in the city at large.

“It’s a building block in helping folks understand how our wellness is very much tied to all New Yorkers’, but it’s easier to help people understand that on a smaller scale, and then zoom out,” she said, pointing out that “composting your banana peel in Forest Hills reduces the amount of trash being processed in largely Black and brown communities, too.”

Gagarin, who is endorsed by the FHGT, is running on a strong environmental policy platform, including a proposal for citywide mandatory composting, and like the FHGT she sees community composting as a precursor to that effort.

Community composting and the city’s voluntary program

Even as the city moves to bring back voluntary, curbside compost pickup this October, engagement and education on a local level is the gap that Dan Miner, co-chair of FHGT, thinks his group is filling.

“If we’re going to meet the city’s goal of zero waste to landfills by 2030, which is a very good, and deeply ambitious goal, we’re going to need community education at all levels and composting advocates at all local levels reaching out to their neighbors,” he said, noting that while composting is not challenging, it’s not a practice that everyone is comfortable with, and it can be most helpful to start by seeing people are you do it.

And every Sunday at MacDonald Park, that’s exactly what’s happening.

“I think the neighborhood is open to composting,” explained Laster, noting that 50 people stopped by last week’s inaugural drop off.

“But there are still people who are resistant, or who haven’t tried it, which is why it’s important for us to be here every week and begin dialogue with people,” he said, adding “we can show that this is not such a hard thing to do.”

Find out more information about the FHGT’s new food waste drop-off site on their website.