The NYS food scraps law, read from New York City
A state law with a distance test, which is why it lands differently in the five boroughs than it does upstate.
New York State’s Food Donation and Food Scraps Recycling Law asks two things of a large food scrap generator, in order. Donate what is still edible. Recycle what is not, if there is somewhere within range to take it.
The threshold, and where it has got to
The law applies above a weekly tonnage of food scraps, and that threshold has been stepping down since it took effect. The one-ton-per-week tier came into force in January 2026, which brings in businesses that were previously well under the line: a busy full-service restaurant or a mid-sized grocery can produce a ton a week without anyone having thought of it in those terms.
Donation comes first
The order matters and is often skipped. Edible surplus is meant to be donated, not composted. Composting food that a person could have eaten satisfies the recycling half of the law and misses the first half entirely.
The processor distance test
- The recycling requirement applies only where an organics recycler is within a set distance of the generator.
- In the five boroughs that test is usually met, because processing capacity exists in and around the city.
- It is also why processing capacity inside the boroughs is a policy question and not just an operational one: capacity is what makes the requirement bite.
How it interacts with the city rule
They are separate requirements with separate thresholds, and a business can be caught by one and not the other. The city rule turns on business type and size; the state law turns on tonnage. Meeting one does not answer the other, which is worth knowing before assuming a single arrangement covers both.
Where the state law is heading is on the policy tracker.
This describes what the rules say, as best we understand them, and it is not legal advice. Enforcement is the city’s and the state’s, not ours, and nothing we produce certifies anyone’s compliance. Check with DSNY or DEC for anything that turns on a threshold.