About Us
In the Media
Check out some of our recent mentions in the media.
This New Yorker’s Office Is a Mound of Dirt
By Lainey Nguyen, WFUV, February 20th 2026
Baruch College Students and Faculty Visit Earth Matter on Governors Island
By Manish Kumar, The Ticker, November 17th 2025
Earth Matter on its way to gain TRUE Certification as part of C2NY’s 2025 Cohort
By SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, October 7th 2025
How To Compost in New York City
By Erin Schwartz, NY Mag, August 13th 2025
Earth Matter as part of the climate solutions hub on Governors Island
By Thalia Juarez, The Guardian, August 4th 2025
Inside NYC’s Only Lavender Field on Governor’s Island
By Con Edison NYC
By Food Tank
MSWAB Members Educate MoMA Staff on Waste Diversion
By Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board
Click here to read the newsletter.
Musicians, Raina Arnett & Marisa Karchin, partner with Earth Matter
By Glass Clouds Ensemble & Film by FourTen Media
Click here to watch Abash the little bird
Click here to watch Like as the Waves
Barnard Centers Food Sustainability Through STEM and Soil
By Barnard News, August 12, 2024
Click here to read the article.
Space to Grow
By Emma Kowalczyk, Medium, May 7, 2024
Click here to read the article.
Program teaching how to compost cut from NYC budget, as compost numbers ‘poor,’ says report
By Kristin Thorne, ABC7
How composting makes a difference in NYC
By New York Live TV
Fight to Fund Our Communities
Council Member Christopher Marte’s Office newsletter, Spring 2024
Click here to read the newsletter.
Preserving Community Compost in New York City
By Tamar Stollman, Food Tank, March, 2024
Click here to read the article.
Parks Department Throws Out Long Island City Compost Center
By Samantha Maldonado, The City, March 15, 2024
Click here to read the article.
Is New York City Getting Curbside Organics Done?
By Samantha MacBride PhD, BioCycle, March 11, 2024
Click here to read the article. Samantha is one of Earth Matter NY’s Advisors!
New York’s new composting plan is ambitious—but controversial
By Thomas Urbain, phys.org, March 6, 2024
Click here to read the article.
New York City Revolutionizes Waste Management with Mandatory Composting by 2024
By Momen Zellmi, bnnbreaking.com, March 6, 2024
Click here to read the article.
Why New York City Needs Community Composting
By Nora Goldstein, February 13, 2024
Click here to read the article.
Don’t Kill Community Composting in New York City
By Clare Miflin and Samantha MacBride, February 1, 2024
Click here to read the article.
This island near New York City aims to be zero waste
By CNN
Earth Matter Builds Community Around Composting
By Sycamore May, Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, October 10, 2023
Green Thumb Apprentices
May 2022
NYC Ferry’s Team-building Volunteer Day at EMNY
By NYC Ferry April 22, 2022
By Carolina de Armas April 2022
@goldenyearspeers Meet Hollis Hillhouse: a retired, 66-year-old New Yorker with a passion for composting and knitting. #compost #newyork #videoprofile ♬ original sound – Carolina de Armas
GrowNYC Bowling Green Greenmarket FSDO Launch
By NYC Compost Project 10/19/2020
Click here to read the PRESS RELEASE
Drop Off Your Food Scraps At The Bowling Green Greenmarket
10/2020
Click here to read the article on DOWNTOWN ALLIANCE
NYC Compost Project Hosted by Earth Matter Launches a Public Food Scrap Drop Off on Governors Island
By Earth Matter
Click here to read the PRESS RELEASE
Governor’s Island: Off Season
By Alexandra Chairman 2/5/2019
Animal care volunteer Hollis Hillhouse leads adventurer Alexandra onto Governors Island to spend a magical Sunday with our chickens.
Click here to read the article on THE ONLY LIVING GIRL IN NEW YORK
Volunteering in New York
By Yuko Ishikawa 10/16/2018
We’re big in Japan! A reporter spends time with the chickens, goats, and volunteers at Earth Matter NY to find out about how New Yorkers volunteer their time with the help of New York Cares and their corps of volunteers.
Click here to read the article on FUJISANKEI
Volunteer Day
Summer 2018
We have so much gratitude to Booking.com for sharing this awesome video of their day with us this past summer.
Earth Matter mentioned in Live Science article, September 2018
Live Science asks: If You Throw a Compostable Cup in the Trash, Does It Still Break Down? What do you think the answer is?
Earth Matter mentioned in New York magazine column, The Strategist, June 2018
The Strategist wanted our take on The Best Compost Bins, According to Environmental Experts
Thank you from the Just Food Conference 2018
With our volunteers, we diverted a whopping 96% of waste from landfills! This includes paper, metal, and plastic recyclable items and 297 lbs of organic waste!
Hunter College Food Policy Center Hails Earth Matter, December 2017
A look at how we’re taking composting to a new level.
Oyster-tecture, October 2017
Earth Matter was part of the 99% invisible podcast episode about Oyster-tecture.
Read the full article and listen to the episode.
Earth Matter featured in Garden Collage, February 2017
We spent the day with Nora Mueller and Andreana Bitsis from Garden Collage to talk about composting and zero waste efforts in NYC.
Earth Matter featured in Huffington Post, September 2015
Rebecca Louie featured the volunteer opportunities at Earth Matter.
Earth Matter featured in Crains, June 2015
Earth Matter was featured as one of the composting processing sites in Crains article on recycling food waste.
Check us out in NYC Go’s Guide to Governors Island!
Earth Matter featured in City Limits Article, May 2015
Cole Rosengren came to one of our monthly compost builds for information for his article on City Limits, City Composting Effort Will Reduce Waste, But Needs Room.
Earth Matter featured in BioCycle October 2014, Vol. 55, No. 9, p.35
Earth Matter NY, located on Governors Island in New York Harbor, operates a Compost Learning Center, training programs, zero waste initiatives and a community composting site. Part V
Going Green on Governors Island: An Urban Farm and Composting Center Combine to Produce Fresh Vegetables in The Broadsheet Daily, August 2014
Article written by Caroline Press, photos provided by Robert and Alison Simko
Earth Matter featured in Organic Gardening Magazine, Feb/March 2014
Valery Rizzo and Nancy Matsumoto stopped by our center and wrote a piece about us. This features one of our star volunteers, Meredith Hill and her students.
Read the article and see the photos.
Earth Matter featured in BioCycle February 2014, Vol. 55, No. 2, p.20
A range of collaborative programs involving city agencies and community composters has helped increase the diversion of household food scraps.
Earth Matter featured in BioCycle December 2013, Vol. 54, No. 12, p. 11
Earth Matter featured in BioCycle November 2013, Vol. 54, No. 11, p. 22
Twenty years of investment in neighborhood and small-scale composting operations by the City’s Department of Sanitation yields flourishing movement of community composters.
The Broadsheet Daily, May 2013
Thanks to the LaCroix family for volunteering and writing about us for The Broadsheet Daily!
Article written by Caroline Press, photos provided by Gabriela Strejilevich de Loma.
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…A little-known corner of Governors Island is a fertile spot near Picnic Point where Earth Matter NY Inc, in partnership with the Trust for Governors Island, operates a Compost Learning Center.
The non-profit organization is dedicated to rescuing organic waste from the garbage stream in order to turn it into compost, and their healthy soils initiative supports composting and sustainable gardening at community gardens. During the summer season on Governors Island the public and school visiting groups attend free hands-on workshops on waste reduction and composting techniques, using food scraps collected from events, food vendors and resource recovery stations throughout the island.
Aixa and Ivan Lacroix
The Earth Matter site is also home to a family of chickens, rabbits, goats and worm nurseries, often tended by a motley crew of volunteers. Last month’s Volunteers of the Month were brother and sister Aixa and Ivan Lacroix, ages 10 and 12, who fell in love with the animals and visited them every weekend last summer. Finding a haven from urban life at the composting outpost, Ivan wrote in an essay, “At Earth Matter, it is not easy to take care of the animals. . . . Some of the tasks are changing the animals’ food, picking up the chicken eggs, and once in a while building a new house for the animals. Although these tasks can be arduous satisfaction pays up for the effort you have done.” Aixa adds with enthusiasm, “Do you have free time? Take a ferry to Governor’s Island and go visit Earth Matter! I often take care of the goats, Browser and Pearl . . . and I am able to answer almost any question about the chickens.”
(Photos courtesy of Gabriela Strejilevich de Loma)
Earth Matter is featured in the City College Master of Landscape Architecture student journal rounding out the submissions by asserting the worth of black gold as the basis of our ecology.
Launch party on May 30.
Urban Farm Magazine article on Earth Matter
Urban Farm Magazine’s Elizabeth Scholl visited Earth Matter this spring for a feature on the CLC.
L Magazine visited the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island on July 16 and 17, and after enticing us with stories about the food and the Gatsby-era atmosphere, made special mention of our friend Bucky Buckaw and his Serama hens (who are hanging out all summer with the rest of our chickens at our Compost Learning Center), who attended the party in all their finery. The article also features information about Earth Matter’s activities on and off the island.
Other oddities included a coop of heritage hens on display from a chicken-raising radio host named Bucky Buckaw. He’d brought his own flock of bantam hens and a small case of eggs to demonstrate “the transformative power of micro-flock chickening for empowerment, aesthetics, ethics, and, most of all, FUN!,” according to his business card. An adjacent table held composting how-to pamphlets from the nonprofit Earth Matter.
Read about reporter Cathy Erway’s jazzy experience.
A chance meeting with Earth Matter supporters Gayle Raskin and Udo Dresser at the East Village cafe hub “Ciao for Now” one morning, ended up bringing together New York Times writer David Itzkoff, Upright Citizens Brigade Theater’s Alex Sidtis and Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation” TV star), Patrick Nash and Harriet Spear – sign makers for Earth Matter’s Compost Learning Center on Governors Island, and Earth Matter’s newest compost workers – 54 chicks.
To make a long story short, Gayle and Udo started a series of connections between a comedy skit, and the cute fuzzy Earth Matter chicks that has led to Earth Matter becoming the lucky recipient of a beautiful sign that will adorn the chicks’ new 26′ wide x 15′ long x 13′ high green house home.
The public is welcome to visit the chicks (and the sign) at Earth Matter’s Compost Learning Center 12-4 pm, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays starting Memorial Day weekend, 2011. The hot chicks sign will be posted above the green house entrance where these free grazing chickens will feast on food waste generated on Governors Island, and contribute nitrogen, in the form of poop, which is one of the ingredients Earth Matter uses in making compost.
Earth Matter volunteers will assemble this hoop house in May 2011. We will post times for these community construction work days in the upcoming weeks. Volunteers are welcome to join us.
Pictured here are David Ikzkoff (orange shirt), Alex Sidtis (blue shirt), Patrick Nash, (with drill), Amy Poehler (black shirt), and several well wishers.
Read more about the hot chicks saga.