New York Has a Food-Waste Problem. South Korea Took a Very Different Approach

The post New York Has a Food-Waste Problem. South Korea Took a Very Different Approach first appeared on Crafting Your Home.

New York City has spent years trying to get residents to separate food scraps from the rest of their trash. Today, every household in the city has access to curbside composting, and separating organic waste is mandatory.

Meanwhile, South Korea has spent decades building a system that collects food waste separately and processes it on a much larger scale.

New York’s Food Waste Is a Big Part of the Trash Problem

Food scraps, yard waste, and other organic materials make up roughly 36% of New York City’s residential waste stream, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.

That gap is one reason the city’s composting program remains such an important part of New York’s broader effort to change how household waste is handled.

By October of that year, curbside composting had expanded to every New York City resident. The Department of Sanitation says residents can put food scraps, food-soiled paper, and yard waste out for collection on their recycling day.

Composting Is Now Mandatory in NYC

New York’s program is no longer an optional environmental project.

The city requires residents to separate compostable material from ordinary trash. Since April 1, 2025, property owners can be fined when they don’t separate organic material from trash.

The Independent Budget Office’s April 2026 analysis, however, found that enforcement has not been occurring at the level originally envisioned.

The report says that between January and February 2026, the city issued organic-separation fines at only about 3% of the level seen in April 2025.

South Korea Started Changing Its System Decades Ago

South Korea offers a striking comparison because its food-waste policies began much earlier.

The country banned landfilling food waste in 2005. In 2013, the country introduced mandatory food-waste recycling using special bags, with fees helping to fund the system.

A World Economic Forum report, citing data and reporting from Reuters, said South Korea had increased the share of food waste recycled from about 2% in 1995 to roughly 95% by 2019.

That doesn’t mean the country has eliminated food waste. Instead, it has developed an extensive system to keep food scraps out of ordinary landfill waste and process them separately.

Seoul Even Uses Technology to Track Food Waste

South Korea’s approach also includes technology.

In Seoul, automated food-waste bins can weigh what residents throw away. Some systems use identification technology to link the waste to individual users and charge based on the amount discarded.

The broader idea is straightforward: if throwing away food has a measurable cost, households may be incentivized to waste less.

New York Is Building a Different Kind of System

New York isn’t starting from nothing.

The city says its curbside composting program now serves residents citywide, and material collected through the program can be turned into compost or renewable energy.

The Department of Sanitation reported that during October 2024, the first month after citywide curbside service reached every resident, New Yorkers diverted about 15 million pounds of compostable material.

The city has also expanded its network of Smart Composting Bins, allowing residents to drop off food scraps outside of regular curbside collection.

What New York Could Learn

It is the importance of making food-waste separation part of normal daily life.

South Korea’s system developed over decades through laws, fees, separate collection, and processing infrastructure. New York is much earlier in its citywide rollout.

Still, the comparison highlights an important point for New Yorkers: food scraps aren’t necessarily destined for the garbage truck and landfill.

The Kitchen Is Where the Change Starts

Instead of putting every unwanted item into the same trash bag, residents are being asked to think about what happens next.

That may sound simple, but getting an entire city to do it consistently is a much bigger challenge.

South Korea’s experience shows that large-scale food-waste recycling is possible when collection systems, rules, incentives, and processing infrastructure work together. New York is now trying to build its own version of that system.

The city still hasn’t solved its food-waste problem. But with mandatory composting now in place, the question is no longer whether New York can separate food waste.