Virtual Hearing on the NYC 2026 Solid Waste Management Plan
Held on October 22, 2025
The State of New York Department of Environmental Conservation requires municipalities to develop a 10-year “detailed, concrete, and realistic” Local Solid Waste Management Plan. “An overarching goal of a LSWMP is to reduce the amount of solid waste destined for disposal by preventing its generation and increasing reuse, recycling, composting, and other organic materials recycling methods.” The Queens Solid Waste Advisory Board scheduled a virtual hearing immediately upon the NYC Department of Sanitation’s release of its 2026 Draft Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP) on October 1, 2025 because DSNY offered no opportunity for public testimony at a public hearing. Also, the initial 45-day public comment period, which was the minimum allowable under current guidelines, did not provide sufficient time to adequately review and process the 500 page plan, do the public outreach and education needed to inform the public about the plan and its impacts, and to collect public testimony and feedback. QSWAB’s virtual hearing on the 2026 Draft SWMP on October 22, 2025 ensured that the people of Queens would have public input into the plan. The hearing was publicized through flyers, email, listservs, and word of mouth and elicited testimony from Queens residents, civic associations, environmental organizations, and community-based organizations. In total, 17 people provided verbal and/or written testimony.
There were several common themes that emerged from the testimony.
First, Queens residents want the plan to focus more on organics and recyclables capture and diversion, rather than on waste export and landfill/incineration. They want more local composting, more space for organics processing within the borough of Queens, and more education about the benefits of community composting. We heard many examples of successful community composting sites, from larger sites like the Queens Botanical Garden, to smaller, grassroots composting operations like JH Scraps in Jackson Heights, and the Forest Hills Green Team. There are concerns that the 2026 Draft SWMP does not include specific enough plans and commitments to reach or advance New York City’s original recycling goals (Local Law 19 of 1989), much less its ambitious Zero Waste legislation (Local Laws 86 and 87 of 2023), which has a goal of diverting recyclable/compostable materials from the municipal solid waste stream by 2030. Some recommendations we heard include (1) modernizing the Bottle Bill, which would divert thousands of tons of recyclable bottles and containers from the trash stream; (2) switching DSNY’s curbside collection schedule to one pickup per week of black bag trash, and two pickups per week of organic scraps, MGP (Metal, Glass, Plastic), and paper/cardboard, thereby prioritizing their capture and diversion and rightsizing collections to meet current waste streams; and (3) enforcing organics and recycling laws, including recycling room and curbside recycling and organics collection rules in multi-unit buildings.
Second, Queens residents, and residents of communities on the receiving end of New York City’s waste – places where our trash is transported, processed, landfilled or incinerated – testified that DSNY’s current waste export practices burden them with adverse health, environmental, and economic consequences. Many Queens communities are negatively impacted by DSNY’s current waste tonnage, low (and stagnant for decades) capture and diversion rates, and waste export practices. Waste transfer facilities in Jamaica, Long Island City and College Point pollute the air and soil. In Southeast Queens, which has a proliferation of waste transfer stations in close proximity to residential areas, there is a consistent lack of enforcement of environmental laws and statutes and zoning mandates. The Waste Equity Law (Local Law 152 of 2018), which limits tonnage at waste transfer stations in Southeast Queens and other overburdened communities, and Commercial Waste Law (Local Law 199 of 2019), which aims to reduce commercial waste transfer traffic and improve air quality and public safety, have not yet yielded the laws’ mandated relief. Old locomotives and open rail cars that export NYC’s trash spew toxic fumes and waste blowoff and leachate in residential neighborhoods all along the rail lines. And the communities that receive NYC’s trash for landfill or incineration, like Chester PA, suffer from increased rates of cancer, asthma, and other adverse health and environmental impacts. These environmental injustices are not addressed in the 2026 Draft SWMP, and should be.
Third, illegal dumping and street litter are big problems in Queens – and yet neither are addressed at all in the Draft 2026 SWMP. There is a lack of surveillance, enforcement, and remediation of illegal dumping despite frequent complaints, especially in environmental justice communities, including Southeast Queens. Illegal dumping sites harbor rats, mosquitoes and other vermin, foster the growth of black mold which becomes airborne, and release toxic chemicals and metals into the soil and groundwater which pollutes surrounding areas. There is also little to no enforcement for street and plastic litter throughout the borough. Public trash cans are not emptied frequently enough which exacerbates street litter, especially in commercial areas. Street and plastic litter clog catch-basins and sewers that flood during storms. This is a major problem in Queens, especially in low-lying areas of Central and Southeast Queens which are already prone to frequent storm flooding, and which may also be at risk of coastal flooding. Both illegal dumping and street litter should be addressed in the 2026 Draft SWMP.
In short, QSWAB is recommending that the 2026 Draft SWMP:
- Focus on reducing the City’s reliance on waste export to landfill/incineration by expanding and tracking actions that will increase capture and diversion of recyclable/compostable materials to meet New York City’s Zero Waste Law by 2030.
- Expand local composting in Queens and New York City, and compost Queens’ curbside organics instead of co-digesting them with sewage at the Newtown Creek sewage treatment plant. Composting organics reduces the amount of sludge produced and has economic, environmental, and community health benefits. However, the draft SWMP includes the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s problematic plans for co-digestion of organics with sewage sludge and land application of this sludge. Sludge is contaminated with PFAS, heavy metals, and other toxicants. The draft SWMP as written is unresponsive to current scientific and market considerations. For example, citing health concerns, at its December 2025 conference, the New York Farm Bureau shifted its stance from approval of land application of sewage sludge to “Opposition of the land application of biosolids that have detectable amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and/or elevated levels of heavy metals.”
- Include and address illegal dumping and street litter in the plan, which have dire environmental, health and safety consequences when left unaddressed.
- Permit and enforce with regard to existing environmental laws and statues, and zoning mandates.
We invite you to explore these assets from the QSWAB Virtual Hearing and from QSWAB’s review of the SWMP with the other three active NYC Solid Waste Advisory Boards. These were submitted to the New York City Department of Sanitation by their revised January 16, 2026 deadline for public comment on the SWMP
- Speakers’ Recorded Testimony, Transcription and Topics
- All-SWAB public comment on the Draft SWMP approved by the Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan and Queens SWABS