New York City’s composting mandate is nearly two weeks old, and critics say the Sanitation Department’s campaign encouraging tenants to report landlords who don’t comply with the new regulations is turning New Yorkers against each other, all in the name of composting.

On April 1, the city started issuing summonses, ranging from $25 to $300, to New Yorkers who are caught mixing material like food scraps, yard waste, and compostable packaging with regular trash.

Thus far, the Sanitation Department has issued a total of 2,462 summonses to property owners citywide while reporting a 240 percent increase in compostable material kept out of landfills, according to a city Sanitation spokesperson.

But critics say the city’s recent mail campaign is indicative of the Sanitation Department’s enforce-first, educate-second approach to the compost mandate. 

“Encouraging tenants to report their landlords just days after the mandate went into effect sends the wrong message. Instead of fostering cooperation, it creates tension and pits neighbors against one another,” said the chief of staff for City Council member Robert F. Holden, Democrat of Queens, Daniel Kuryzna. 

The mailer, which features a smiling cartoon sanitation officer standing next to a cascade of compostable items like a fish carcass and a paper coffee filter as it spills into the distinctive brown compost bin, asks, “Is Your Building Not Composting? Let Us Know. Call 311.” 

“If I’m a tenant, I read this and say, ‘okay, composting is the responsibility of my landlord, so I’ll continue to produce my trash the way I do, and my super can just sift through all my trash and make sure that they are complying,’” said the head of the New York Apartment Association, a lobbying group that represents the city’s property owners, Kenny Burgos.

The fines themselves, Mr. Burgos fears, are taking money away from much-needed upgrades and maintenance repairs that many older buildings require.

The mailer in question was sent at the end of March, just one week before the mandate went into full effect, according to a Sanitation Department spokesman. 

The seemingly rushed timing of that mailer is one of many examples the Sanitation Department’s awareness campaign has fallen “abysmally short,” said Mr. Burgos.

On Thursday, seven City Council members from the Common-Sense Caucus introduced a new legislation that would make composting a voluntary, not mandatory, program.

“Composting is used throughout the world, and I’m not opposed to it. But mandating it in New York City—especially at a time when landlords are being squeezed by rising costs, regulations, and housing mandates—is not wise. The city should be incentivizing its use, not penalizing those who, for any number of reasons, can’t comply right away,” said Holden, the City Council Member from Queens, in a statement. 

The Sanitation Department spent $1 million on “substantial outreach” and education in the lead-up to the fines becoming official on April 1st. But the resulting awareness campaign was, and continues to be, “insufficient, especially for such a sweeping mandate,” said Mr. Kurzyna.

“New Yorkers want to do the right thing. But they don’t want to be policed into it,” he added.