OUR MISSION

Big Reuse's mission is to fight climate change through community-based zero waste initiatives.

Our programs bring NYC residents together to care for their own green infrastructure and empower communities to embrace composting, tree care, and reuse at a grassroots level, scalable citywide and beyond. The Big Reuse Center takes in tens of thousands of donated items that are resold and kept in use by thousands of new owners, keeping them out of the landfill. We help New Yorkers care for their street trees and sustain city-wide composting programs that collect food scraps and turn them into compost used to enrich soil across NYC and strengthen our communities against climate change.

History

• 2015 - Build It Green! NYC's Salvaged and Surplus Building Materials program spins off to create Big Reuse based in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Big Reuse launches Big Reuse Center, its social enterprise, which sells a broad variety of donated used and vintage goods. Big Reuse operates NYC Compost Project Hosted by Big Reuse. 
• 2017 - Curbside Composting Outreach, in partnership with the NYC Department of Sanitation starts up to conduct community outreach to grow sign-ups for and increase participation in NYC’s Curbside Composting Program. Big Reuse begins operating two large-scale community composting sites. The Queensbridge composting site was an illegal dump for waste until Big Reuse took over management of the Parks space and removed 40 dumpsters of garbage, upgrading the space into a nationally recognized community composting site.
• 2020 - The US Composting Council names Big Reuse as the Composter of the Year - Small Scale. Big Reuse is a featured recipient of USDA’s Composting and Food Waste Reduction grant.
• 2022 - Big Reuse launches a street tree care team, funded by eight city council members. Big Reuse's NYC Compost Project team's community composting network grows to 75 food scrap drop off sites. The Big Reuse Curbside Composting team leads outreach for boroughwide Queens curbside composting launch. 
• 2023 - The Big Reuse Curbside Composting team leads outreach for boroughwide Brooklyn curbside composting launch. 100% of the city’s community composting programs and outreach are defunded beginning 12/30/23 in mayoral budget cuts. Together with Save Our Compost Coalition, Big Reuse and other affected groups launch extensive advocacy campaign to try to restore funding.
• 2024 - City Council restores funding for NYC community composting programs! Despite overwhelming public and elected official support, the NYC Parks department refuses to renew Big Reuse's lease for their Queensbridge composting site, instead pushing them out to build a parking lot.