Month: September 2026

What If We Stopped Treating Food Waste Like Garbage? A conversation with Shabazz Jackson

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Photo credit: Michael Isabell

By Rebecca Martin

There is something magical about watching food waste become soil.

I would know, because I’ve been doing it in my own backyard this summer—with a little help from Shabazz Jackson and Josephine Papagni of Greenway Environmental Services.

One principle Shabazz and Josephine shared with me: waste should be managed as close to where it is generated as possible. And what could be closer than our own backyards?

In just a couple of months, I’ve been turning about 20 pounds a week of household organic material into compost—all in my little Earth Machine composter that they provided for me. At that rate, my backyard will process more than 1,000 pounds, or roughly half a ton, of organic material in a year.

Think about that. Half a ton of material getting a second life right here at home—not hauled away, buried or burned, but turned into healthy soil that helps create beautiful gardens.

And I’m not just breaking down vegetable scraps and other organics, but meat and oils, too—something I never thought would be possible in my little home composting system. No maggots. No flies. Just red wigglers. My compost has become such a rich, healthy ecosystem that the jumping worms can’t tolerate it. 

And my backyard isn’t unusual. Roughly two-thirds of Ulster County’s housing units are single-family, detached homes—that’s tens of thousands of households with outdoor space. If more of those households composted even 20 pounds of food waste a week, as I do, we could keep thousands of tons of organic material out of the waste stream every year. 

I remove at least 20lbs of organics from my kitchen every week.

In Kingston, the backyard composter doesn’t have to stand alone. The City’s community composting program gives residents a way to keep the practice going year-round—when backyard composters freeze in the winter, residents can bring their food waste to the community system instead.

That’s the power of thinking about organic waste differently. We don’t need one giant solution—we need a network of local solutions working together: backyards, community composting programs and transfer stations. And Greenway has figured out how to make one of the smallest pieces of that system—the backyard composter—remarkably efficient.

That’s what makes Greenway’s invention so exciting. They’ve taken the natural process of decomposition and figured out how to make it work quickly and cleanly in an urban backyard—even with meat and oils. What once seemed like “waste” can become a resource right where it is generated. And that’s something I want everyone who reads KingstonCitizens.org to know: you can do this, too.

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Who are you, and how long have you been doing this work?

Shabazz Jackson: Greenway Environmental Services is a regional organics recovery and soil company. We collect and process food scraps, leaves, brush, logs, pallets, and other organic materials and transform them into compost, mulch, topsoil, and specialty soil blends rather than sending them to the landfill. Our philosophy is to recover the organic fraction of the waste stream and return that fertility to the soil, while helping protect groundwater and surface water. We also design zero-waste systems and work with colleges, municipalities, businesses, and other institutions to develop and manage food-waste programs.  We’ve been doing this work for more than 50 years. I’m an inventor, but what we invent are natural systems. The challenge is to take a process that nature designed to happen slowly and redesign it so that it works efficiently in an urban environment. We’re essentially learning from nature and figuring out how to make those systems work at the scale and speed that our communities need.

How do you do that?

SJ:  In nature, organic material breaks down slowly and feeds small organisms that depend on it. That’s a good system for a forest, but in a city or neighborhood, we don’t want food waste sitting around, attracting maggots and flies and creating odors. We work with nature, not against it—to take the biological process nature designed and adapt it to the way we live. And we’ve succeeded at doing that.

What exactly have you invented?

SJ: The key is to engage during the decomposition process. We’re imitating the human digestion system. It’s a form of biomimicry. We give it the right biology and the right environment to decompose efficiently from the start.

We start with a rapid decomposition medium that goes into the Earth Machine, like the one you have, along with the food waste. We make it by mixing actively decomposing food-waste compost with wood chips from the local tree-service industry. When a tree is removed, the tree service grinds it into chips, and we use some of those locally sourced chips in our medium.

The medium introduces an active biological process right from the beginning. Instead of letting food waste sit around and begin to rot, we’re creating the conditions for it to break down quickly and aerobically. That’s the key.

The “medium” at the bottom of my composter is now what I use to place on top of my weekly collection. It’s rich with red wigglers.

The second component is our odor-control blend, which is what you call the “lasagna.” Every time you add food waste to your kitchen container, you simply sprinkle a handful of the blend over it. It’s a biological filter that absorbs the sulfur generated when food rots.  The odor control blend is a mix of completely cured and finely screened food waste compost and wood shavings which is effective in controlling moisture.  At present, we are field testing the materials in preparation for household distribution.  It’s available in bulk at our community composters in New Paltz and Poughkeepsie.  We make the blend at our facility using clean wood shavings collected from a modern wood shop. The shavings are a clean byproduct of that process. We mix the kiln-dried wood shavings with fully decomposed and cured food-waste compost that has been finely screened. The blend inoculates the food with the bacteria needed right at the beginning of the process. That’s what makes it work.

So the goal at the start is to stop food from rotting?

SJ: Yes. The goal is to help it decompose in the right way from the start when it matters. 

Why is the beginning of the process so important?

SJ: Because that’s where you establish the biological environment. We’ve inherited a culture that treats food as garbage as soon as we’re finished with it. Think about what happens in a typical household. Once a week, you take out a load of rotting food. Maybe you’ve separated it from the rest of your garbage and put it in a container provided by the municipality. But you’re still carrying over the culture of disposal. And the problem is that rotting food is inherently difficult to manage that way. It’s wet. It attracts flies and maggots. It smells. We’re trying to make a cultural transition—a cultural upgrade. At the base of that transition is the idea that we should stop having rotting food sitting around our kitchens. Instead, we need to separate this material and give it the biological conditions it needs from the very beginning.

Greenway’s “Odor Control Blend” is the magic sauce! I get 2-3 buckets a month that keeps me in the clear.

And some of the materials you’re using are themselves made from waste?

SJ:  Yes. That’s one of the reasons we can keep the cost so low. We’ve figured out how to take commercial waste and turn it into a resource.

How do you work with local businesses while keeping their food waste as close to its source as possible?

SJ: We want to encourage food waste to go to the closest appropriate local facility. For example, we have a contract with Adams Fairacre Farms, and we also work with the Culinary Institute of America. Both generate food waste locally. Adams has a store in Kingston, and the CIA is in Hyde Park, close to UCRRA. So, in keeping with our principle of managing waste as close to its source as possible, it doesn’t make sense to haul that material all the way to New Paltz when UCRRA is right there. We send their food waste to UCRRA.

So you don’t believe that everything needs to go to one centralized facility?

SJ:  No. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for removing organics from the waste stream. We need to start thinking differently. We’re looking at each waste stream and asking what makes the most sense locally.

How does compost connect to food systems?

SJ: In nature, soil and food are part of the same cycle. Plants take nutrients from the soil, and organic material eventually returns those nutrients to the soil. If we’re designing a sustainable food system, we should be doing the same thing. The composter and the garden shouldn’t be separate—they should be part of one system. You might bring in materials at the beginning to establish a garden. That’s a one-time contribution of material we’ve recovered from commercial sources. After that, the food waste generated in the surrounding community can be broken down and returned to the soil, helping maintain the fertility of the garden. The food feeds the soil, and the soil helps grow more food. That’s how nature works.

After breaking up my food scraps, I add about a 1/2 inch of medium from the bottom of my composter

Haven’t we already built a decentralized waste system?

SJ: In many ways, we have. Ulster County’s goal is to recover 90 percent of the waste stream by 2050. And the county has already invested in a decentralized system to help get there. UCRRA is the hub, and the 19 transfer stations are the spokes. That’s a significant investment in infrastructure that is already spread throughout the county. So I don’t think the question is whether we should have a decentralized system. We’ve already made that choice. Now we need to develop it. The question is: How do we use the system we’ve already built to recover 90 percent of our waste? That means looking at what each transfer station can do, how we can remove organics from the waste stream, and how we can connect the different pieces.

What does this have to do with the future of Ulster County’s waste system?

SJ: Everything. I think we need to stop pursuing projects like Global NRG and decide what kind of system we actually want to build. There is only one pool of money. UCRRA already has access to roughly $60 million in bonding—enough to invest significantly in a more decentralized system. I’m currently serving on the UCRRA Zero Waste Committee, and I think our first job should be to decide is if we want a centralized system, or do we want to develop the decentralized system we already have?

Why is removing organics from the waste stream so important?

SJ: Because you can’t get to zero waste without removing organics from the waste stream. Food waste is one of the largest parts of what we’re throwing away, and it doesn’t belong in a landfill or an incinerator. It belongs back in the biological cycle. There isn’t one solution that will work everywhere. We need to look at what we’re generating, where we’re generating it, and what infrastructure we already have. And we have to pay attention to our largest industries.

Tourism is a major part of Ulster County’s economy, and tourism generates a tremendous amount of food waste. We can’t seriously talk about zero waste without figuring out how to keep that material out of the disposal stream.

New Paltz gives us an opportunity to demonstrate what this could look like. The Village has a significant tourism economy and a concentration of restaurants and other food-related businesses generating commercial food waste. The Town already has infrastructure at its transfer station. Why not put those pieces together and make New Paltz a model?

The transfer station could take the food waste generated by the Village’s tourism economy, and we could measure what happens when we actually capture that material—how much is diverted, how clean the stream is, what it costs, and how much compost and soil we can produce from it. That would give us a real-world demonstration that could be replicated in other communities across Ulster County.

I always water my compost after adding to it, so that it’s damp (not wet). Moisture is required to break organic material down efficiently.

What do you think Greenway’s role is in this transition?

SJ: Greenway has the solution. Our society has the problem. We’ve been preparing for the day when people finally say, “Okay, Shabazz. We’ve heard enough.” When that day comes, we’re ready. In fact, we’re ready now.

Our role was to invent natural systems and figure out how to make them work in the places where people live. Nature has already designed a system for breaking down organic material. Flies, mealworms, bacteria and other organisms do that work naturally. But when we live in an urban environment, we need to manage that same material differently. Our challenge is to create the conditions for it to break down without the flies and the odor.

And that’s where people come in. Maybe you have a small piece of property. Maybe you’ve invested thousands of dollars and countless hours into your backyard garden. You’re already investing in the food you’re growing. Why not take the organic material you’re already generating and turn it back into the soil that makes your garden more productive?

That’s what Greenway is here to do: take what nature designed, adapt it to our urban environment, and use it to meet people’s needs.  We don’t need to start from scratch. We need to connect the pieces we already have—and build a system that keeps organic material close to where it is generated, puts it back into the soil, and move Ulster County toward its goal of recovering 90 percent of its waste by 2050.

If you’re interested in Greenway’s backyard composting program and other services, contact Shabazz and Josephine at: gr*********@*ol.com

 

Voila! It’s ready to work its magic.

 

Kingston Is Receiving 4 Million Gallons of “Garbage Water” a Year. What Will the State and Our Local Officials Do About It?

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This is the latest in our ongoing series  following efforts to close the Leachate Loophole.

By Rebecca Martin

We’ve written about Kingston’s role in New York’s landfill leachate problem, and the issue has received significant press attention. But people are still learning about what is happening here—and there is an important reason to pay attention right now.

New York State is considering new regulations for landfill leachate, and the public comment period is open through September 9.

Leachate is “garbage water”—the contaminated liquid created when rain moves through buried waste and is collected at the bottom of a landfill. It can contain PFAS, heavy metals, pesticides, industrial chemicals, and other pollutants.

According to New York River Watch’s statewide analysis, approximately 4 million gallons of this contaminated garbage water are sent to Kingston’s sewage treatment plant every year. From there, the discharge enters Rondout Creek and ultimately flows into the Hudson River—a drinking-water source for more than 107,000 people downstream.

Kingston has already raised concerns.

In early 2025, the City of Kingston notified the Town of Hurley that it would no longer accept its landfill leachate from the Hurley landfill, a NYS Superfund site*. Following state-required testing, however, Kingston ultimately continued accepting it.

The City was working from a single sample tested for only three contaminants, providing a very limited picture of what may be present in landfill leachate. The state subsequently told the City that the results were below the applicable thresholds for the three contaminants tested and therefore met current standards. It is difficult to understand how “meeting current standards” can be considered an adequate threshold when sewage treatment plants are not monitoring for or designed to remove the full range of toxic chemicals that are present in leachate. Dilution is not the solution to this pollution.

The Proposed Rules Exempt Inactive Landfills—Including Those Sending Leachate to Kingston

There is another serious problem for Kingston. Every landfill currently sending leachate to the City of Kingston’s sewage treatment plant is inactive. Yet the proposed regulations, as currently written, exempt inactive landfills from the new treatment requirements. That means that if the regulations are adopted as written, every landfill currently sending leachate to Kingston could remain exempt from the new source-treatment requirements—allowing this flow of pollution to continue for another generation.

A landfill does not stop producing contaminated leachate simply because it stops accepting garbage. The chemicals and other pollutants remain in the buried waste, and leachate can continue to be generated for decades.

If New York is going to establish new requirements for landfill leachate, those requirements need to apply to active, inactive, and closed landfills.

Now is the time for action.

The state’s proposed regulations present a once-in-a-generation opportunity to require treatment at the source—before landfill leachate leaves a landfill.

As far as we are aware, we have not yet seen public engagement in this rulemaking from Kingston’s elected or appointed officials, Ulster County legislators representing affected communities, or the County Executive’s Office.  If they have submitted comments, taken a position, or otherwise engaged, we would welcome being informed so we can share that information with the community.

There is still time, and participating is easy. The public and officials can submit comments, call for the regulations to apply to inactive landfills, support stronger source-treatment requirements, and ask the state for a transition plan for municipalities like Kingston that currently receive landfill leachate.

Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency Executive Director Marc Rider has signed onto the statewide coalition letter supporting stronger regulations. We appreciate his participation. We hope Kingston and Ulster County officials will use this opportunity as well.

The public comment deadline is September 9. This is an important opportunity for our local leaders to make their positions known—and help ensure that the state’s new regulations actually address the problem.

*  Correction: The Town of Hurley landfill is a state Superfund site, not a federal Superfund site.

If you represent an organization: Sign on to New York River Watch’s public comment letter by September 8 and join the 75+ organizations that have already signed on.

If you are an individual: Visit New York River Watch’s Action page to submit a public comment.

If you would like to submit your own comments directly: Visit the NYSDEC’s public comment page for information on how to participate.

A Critical Window of Opportunity for Ulster County Zero Waste Planning

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This is the latest in our ongoing series  following efforts to move Ulster Toward Zero Waste.  The images above are examples of Zero Waste Implementation Plans, and can all be found for review at: https://energyjustice.net/zerowaste/

 

By Rebecca Martin

There is an important and encouraging development in Ulster County’s zero waste planning: community members now have a seat at the table—at least for a couple of months.

The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency (UCRRA) Zero Waste Committee selected four community members to help develop a Preliminary Zero Waste Implementation Plan (ZWIP): Shabazz Jackson, Manna Jo Greene, Claudia Joseph, and me, representing KingstonCitizens.org.

Chaired by Chris Hurlbert, the committee recently opened non-voting seats to community members interested in contributing to the planning process. It is a positive step toward bringing community voices into recommendations for a more credible, practical, and sustainable zero waste future.

Because our participation is limited, we have a lot to learn and accomplish in a short period of time. We need to understand what UCRRA is doing, where it is headed, and how our work can best support recommendations to its Board.

Managing Waste vs. Reducing Waste

UCRRA has established 30/60/90 goals: reducing waste 30% by 2030, 60% by 2040, and 90% by 2050.

Its Local Solid Waste Management Plan (LSWMP) is updated every ten years and addresses how the county manages its solid waste system—including collection, transfer, recycling, disposal, and infrastructure. The next plan is expected to be adopted in time for 2030, which is why we are working now to help incorporate zero waste initiatives into it. But adding zero waste initiatives to an LSWMP is not a substitute for actually planning how we will reduce waste. The initiatives need a plan behind them.

A ZWIP, which Ulster County urgently needs, serves a different purpose. It provides the roadmap for reducing the amount of waste we generate and send into the system in the first place. That means establishing measurable reduction and diversion targets, identifying the policies and programs needed to reach them, assigning responsibility, identifying investments, and creating a way to measure and adjust progress.

The zero waste committee heard that UCRRA may already be at or beyond its 30% reduction goal ahead of 2030. However, the “current data is unreliable”  to establish exactly where the county stands.  

That is exactly the kind of work that a ZWIP should analyze to establish a reliable baseline, examine the data we already have, identify what is missing and create a transparent way to track what is being reduced, diverted, and ultimately sent to disposal. 

Why a Real ZWIP is a Worthy Investment   

Hiring an experienced consultant for a ZWIP could be one of the smartest investments the county makes. Ulster County has already invested millions in its transfer station system. A ZWIP can help maximize that investment by identifying how those facilities can do more to prevent, separate, reuse, compost, and recycle materials before they become waste for disposal.

This is an issue we have to get right. It affects our land, water, and air, as well as the way we produce, consume, and ultimately dispose of materials. New Paltz is already moving forward with approaches to reduce and divert waste; the next step is to evaluate what is working there and determine how those lessons can be adapted across the other 18 municipal transfer stations in Ulster County. 

A good consultant could help identify which strategies will have the greatest impact, and establish what our communities, businesses, institutions, UCRRA, and county government each need to do to make them work. 

An investment of approximately $80,000–$100,000 could provide that foundation. The key will be creating a strong RFP based on Zero Waste Hierarchy and selecting a consultant with a demonstrated track record in zero waste implementation—not simply waste management.

That is smart leveraging of the investment that has already made. Before committing to a major new infrastructure, we should first understand what we can achieve through waste prevention, reuse, source separation, composting, recycling, and other strategies—and what infrastructure is actually needed after those opportunities are maximized. 

If UCRRA Sees Global NRG as a Pathway to Zero Waste, It Belongs in the Zero Waste Committee Conversation

The question becomes particularly important now, because UCRRA is considering a proposed $125 million + Global NRG project. Global NRG is the proposed large-scale mixed-waste processing facility that would take municipal solid waste and use mechanical and other technologies to recover materials and divert from disposal.   

As UCRRA Executive Director Marc Rider described it, the public presentation was intended to share UCRRA’s targets—not the specific work needed to reach the end goals. The question is how we get from those targets to actually achieving them. 

After a decade or more of zero waste work in Ulster County, we should have a ZWIP that documents what has been accomplished, what remains to be done, and how the county will get from its current position to 30/60/90. We do not have that plan yet, and we need one 

During the meeting, Rider described Global NRG as “…one of the main projects to get us to Zero Waste.”   If that’s the case, it belongs in the Zero Waste Committee’s conversation.  That is a significant claim for a project carrying a $125 million + price tag and potentially requiring imported waste to keep it operating. We all want to avoid sending waste to Seneca Meadows, and some believe that we may ultimately need to consider a landfill in our own county—but we don’t know that yet. 

That is precisely why we need to first determine how much waste we can eliminate and divert locally. We should not kick the can down the road by building a system that depends on a steady supply of waste to feed it

The committee is not being asked to approve or reject Global NRG; its role is to develop recommendations for the UCRRA Board. To do that responsibly, members need to understand how this proposed infrastructure fits with source reduction, reuse, source separation, composting, recycling, and other strategies—and whether it is actually necessary to achieve 30/60/90.

Connecting the Pieces

Right now, several pieces are moving forward: the Zero Waste Committee is developing zero waste “initiatives” for consideration in UCRRA’s LSWMP, while the Ulster County Legislature is developing zero waste policy guidance.

These efforts should reinforce one another. UCRRA brings operational expertise; the Legislature can advance policy; the Zero Waste Committee can develop practical initiatives; community representatives can bring public experience and accountability; and a qualified zero-waste consultant can help identify gaps, evaluate alternatives, and bring these pieces together into a measurable implementation plan.

But the county needs to do the planning before it locks itself into the “put or pay” infrastructure for 20-25 years.

Get Involved and Take Action

The next UCRRA Zero Waste Committee meeting is Thursday, September 10 at 5:00 PM at UCRRA, 999 Flatbush Road in Kingston, with a livestream available on UCRRA’s YouTube channel, @ucrra5008. The committee meets publicly, and there is an opportunity for public comment at every meeting. The next meetings are October 15, November 12, and December 3. Meeting materials are posted by UCRRA before each meeting.

Attend these meetings. Ask questions. Use public comment.

But most importantly, contact your Ulster County Legislator and ask for two things:

  1. Fund a ZWIP. Support a 2027 budget amendment of $80,000–$100,000 to hire a qualified zero-waste consultant to establish a baseline, identify realistic ways to reduce and divert waste, evaluate alternatives, and determine what infrastructure is actually needed.
  2. Pause Global NRG. Ask the Legislature to support pausing the $125 million + project until this work is completed. While UCRRA is responsible for the project, its financial and long-term impacts will be felt by Ulster County communities and taxpayers. You can also reach out to your local municipal government officials to ask them to advocate for the same. 

Let’s do the planning first—and make the major infrastructure decisions after we know what our communities can actually achieve.