April always brings a special kind of energy to Big Reuse, and this year our community truly shined. Earth Month reminds us that caring for our environment is something we do together, every day, not just once a year. We are so grateful for the volunteers, partners, and neighbors who join us week after week, making each event feel meaningful.
This April, we came together for 77 events across composting, curbside outreach, and street tree care, reaching NYC residents from the Bronx to Queens, Brooklyn, and beyond.
Composting Across the City
Some of our favorite composting moments happened this April. Our team led workshops, helped neighbors start composting, distributed compost, and shared kitchen containers at events all over the city. We even held a compost craft event at SkyFarm! (pictured in the above photo). On Earth Day, April 22, it felt like we were everywhere, meeting folks at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, Traver's Park in Jackson Heights, a big apartment building in Forest Hills, and more. Altogether in April, we handed out 609 kitchen containers to help even more families participate in the city’s curbside composting program. We also delivered over 34,000 pounds of browns and 2,400 pounds of finished compost to community gardens and composting sites across Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan.
A special highlight was our workshop at Warren Street Community Garden with PS 456. Our composting team, along with teachers and parents, guided three classes of first graders through hands-on compost activities. Seeing the kids light up with curiosity about soil and decomposition is what makes this work so rewarding. We also welcomed 12 BlueMark employees to the Salt Lot during Earth Day Week. They rolled up their sleeves, chopped yard waste, shredded brown paper by hand, and helped turn our compost cube. Their energy was infectious, and by the end of the day, we had a mountain of browns ready for the next batch.
Throughout April, we continued our Spanish-language Master Composter workshops with UPROSE's Just Transition Center in Sunset Park, covering topics like community building, compost advocacy, and caring for healthy soils. We also connected with Bengali-speaking neighbors at a Kensington Earth Day event and Spanish-speaking families in Bushwick, making sure everyone felt welcome to join in.
Mark Hellerman, a community composter we work with, put it simply: "Natalia and Big Reuse are the lifesavers here for me. Once she got involved and started getting master composters involved, it really helped us deal with the amount of food waste we're bringing in in a really good way."
One of our volunteers captured what keeps people coming back to composting events with Big Reuse: "Just giving back to the earth and knowing that you're in that process — feeling like you have given in that day to the earth that sustains us. We all eat every single day, so this is just like our way of saying thank you."
Street Tree Care Across the City
Street tree care work also kept us busy all month long. With 624 volunteers, including 328 young people, our team cared for 527 trees across all four boroughs. Some of our favorite moments were working side by side with Fab Fulton, Pinterest, and students from Brooklyn Tech and Global Learning Collaborative on Arbor Day, caring for 38 trees on Fulton Street in just one afternoon. We also teamed up with Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, Clean Bushwick Initiative, PS 45 Horace E. Greene, and the Columbia Secondary School Green Team, among many others, to lead local volunteers in our 5-step tree care process that helps our city's trees thrive.
Dharvin Vasquez, a senior from Global Learning Collaborative who joined us for his Senior Day of Service, left with a new perspective: "I wasn't aware that sometimes trees look really dry from the heat waves, and you can really tell even if you touch them. I also didn't know that you had to loosen the dirt so air can get around, and then add compost on top so the tree gets all the nutrients it needs. Doing this today made me realize, wow, I really like this. Maybe I should start finding these events. It was a really fun experience, meeting different people."
Why It Matters
Hosting 77 events in one month is about so much more than numbers. It is early mornings spent in school gardens with third graders, discovering what healthy soil needs. It is a team of coworkers coming together at the Salt Lot, hands covered in compost. It is middle schoolers in Queens learning they can care for the trees on their block, no permit needed. Every event brings us closer to a greener, more resilient New York, and every person who joins in is part of that story.
We are deeply grateful to City Council for funding community composting for FY26 and to our City Council member partners who fund tree care in their districts, as well as DEC for funding tree care and planting work.
To every volunteer who gave their time and energy this Earth Month, thank you for helping us grow a stronger, more connected community. We hope you continue to join us at our year-round events!
If you would like to be part of what we are building together, we invite you to volunteer at an upcoming event, donate materials to support our work, or sign up for our newsletter to stay in touch.
Written by NYSERDA Climate Justice Fellow Tatiana Guerra