The city’s commercial organics rule does one thing: it requires certain food businesses to keep food scraps out of the regular waste stream and arrange for them to be collected separately. Everything else follows from that.

What separation means day to day

In practice it is a lidded container where the food is, and a habit. Plate scrapings, prep trim, coffee grounds and the paper that touched food go in it rather than into a black bag. Nobody weighs anything or fills in a form. The physical change in a kitchen is one bucket at the dish return.

Who may collect it

• ●A private carter licensed by the Business Integrity Commission.
• ●A micro-hauler, which is a small operator collecting source separated organics only, and is excluded from the Commercial Waste Zones program.
• ●In some cases, a self-haul arrangement to a permitted processing site.

The rule is about where the material ends up, so who collects it matters only in that they have to be someone allowed to.

How it sits with Commercial Waste Zones

Commercial Waste Zones assign a carter to each geographic zone for ordinary commercial waste. Organics collected by a micro-hauler are excluded, which is why a business in a zone can keep its zone carter for trash and recycling and use a separate service for food scraps.

What records you are expected to keep

Keep whatever shows you arranged for separate collection: the agreement with whoever collects, and the record of what was collected. Our own reports say what was collected, when, what it weighed and where it went. They do not certify compliance and do not claim to; that is your obligation as a generator, not something a hauler can sign off.

What is changing

Int. 31 lets DSNY widen the requirement, with a capacity determination due December 1, 2026. Int. 396 would set minimum processing capacity per borough, which is the constraint that decides how far any widening can go. Both are on the policy tracker, with the date each was last checked.