By Katie Vasquez
After finishing his breakfast, Thomas Hinchen doesn’t throw his scraps in the garbage. He puts them in a special bucket he has on his kitchen counter for composting.
“For the city, if it’s organic, it can be composted,” Hinchen tells Currents News.
After he separates the scraps, he then brings the food waste out to his yard to a compost tumbler. It’s a practice he’s been doing for nearly 27 years.
The routine is part of what he says are “just general, good gardening principles.”
Now, all of the Big Apple is joining him.
Starting April 1, New Yorkers can face a $25 fine if they don’t separate their trash.
Composting is meant for your kitchen food scraps, food soiled paper, and dead plants or leaves. It is not meant for paper, glass or plastic – that still goes in your regular recycling.
“Well my tip is just to start out with doing the little that’s required of you,” says Hinchen about making the switch. “What’s required of you is to gather your food scraps and put them in the bin.”
It’s a move that as a parishioner at St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Brooklyn, he applauds.
“I was very happy. I think this is where we need to go, and other cities have gone and other jurisdictions hopefully will go in the future,” Hinchen explains.
He also doesn’t just compost in his own backyard, but at the Prospect Farm garden that he helps with as well.
Although it can get messy, Hinchen knows the reward is worth the work because it ends up in the garden.
As a faithful Catholic, he also knows this work follows the message laid out in Pope Francis’ paper, Laudato Si, that we must care for God’s creation.
“We’re keeping materials out of landfills. If food waste went into landfills, it would be generating methane gas,” says Hinchen, “As the pope said, we need to be concerned about the generations to come.”
And Hinchen will keep his commitment to the earth, one scrap of food at a time.