“Trashin’ the Big Apple,” a short documentary by Alison Byrne, who found my blog through my friend Will.*

She’s just moved from New York to LA, but before she left, she made this excellent exploration of the life cycle of New York City food waste, something I find ridiculously fascinating.  This is exactly the clear, concise information I was looking for.

* One-fifth of American food goes to waste.
* Most of NYC’s waste goes elsewhere, especially poor Pennsylvania.
* Tolls and tipping fees cost NYC $250 million a year.
* Tractor trailers carting the waste burn 33,000 gallons of diesel fuel a day.

Here are the quick stats: NYC sends 11 millions tons of compostable food waste to landfills every year.

The solution?  Composting!

But composting in an apartment sounds really unappealing.  That said, I think it’s a challenge that I should take on.

I just turned to my roommate and announced, “I have to compost.  I have to prove it can be done in New York.”

With a good-natured, if pitiful, laugh, she replied, “Please don’t make me compost!”

Stay tuned…

* The documentary was shown today at the Sustainable CUNY-NYC lecture series (which I definitely should have gone to!  Bad sustainability blogger, bad!)