 Thank you. Thank you. I was about to say it's going to be a peaceful day than I saw Michael. Thank you so much. Really excited to be here today with our Commissioner of Department of Sanitation Jessica Tish and of my home borough president. When I grew up here, Borough President Donovan Richards. And I'm pretty sure we're going to see Francisco Moya and some of our other electives and potentially congressman Meeks because no matter where we go, the Commissioner and I know we hear it all the time. It's about the trash. It's about the trash. And it's keeping our city clean in so many ways. And that's why we're standing here at the uni spear doing great things for our entire planet. And that is recycling, renewing and protecting the environment. Starting this fall, we're bringing guaranteed weekly curbside composting to the entire borough of Queens. This will make New York City home to the largest curbside composting program in the nation, the largest in the nation. Cities are the future. I say this all the time and when I speak with my colleagues across the country, we know that it is in the cities that we're going to make a determination of how not only do we protect the environment but protect our citizen for the future. We're going to lead the way in fighting climate change, but we have to act in ways that are smart, targeted and cost efficient. That is the focus on why we looked at this program that was already in place and thought differently about it. And when we suspended the composting program, I said that we're going to bring it back, but we're going to bring it in a more equitable and a more cost efficient way. And that was our goal and focus. And Commissioner Tish rolled up her sleeve and clearly moved in the right direction and we're proud of the program that she's going to go into detail. And this is keeping the promise that we stated. Beginning October 3rd, all Queens residents will receive weekly collection of yard waste, food scraps and food soiled of paper products. There's no sign up required. This is a no frill way of just getting it done without the bureaucracy and the difficulties of signing up for a program. You just put out your yard waste in a separate bag or bin, the bin that you see that you see here. You can order special sealed composting bins online for food waste. And it is the New York's favorite for letter word free, free to those who want it. And it allows us to coordinate our efforts better to make it even easier. The Department of sanitation will deliver the bin to you, deliver to your home. And we will make sure that you will get it in time to be part of this important program. When you think about it, almost a third of the waste is compostable. Almost a third. That's a significant amount that won't end up in our landfills. But when it goes into our landfill, the reason we are fighting against that because it produces methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas. And that is why we're doing everything possible to keep it out of our landfills. And when we talk about yard waste, Queens is home to 41% of our street trees. So there's a lot of yard waste that's collected. And that's why it's smart to start here in this borough. And we're taking all that composting material and turning it into rich soil for plants that soak up carbon dioxide as they grow. It can also be used to produce renewable energy. And from a discarded apple, core or a falling lead or falling leaves that would normally go into the garbage. We can now use it to improve our environment. I have a composting bin right on my countertop at the office and at Gracie Mansion. We're going to suspend service for a few months started in December when there's almost no yard waste. And then again, have a program but smartly use the program, not just have it, just to have it, but have it to reach a goal. We found that studies have shown that in the startup phase, most compost comes from falling leaves, twigs and other yard material. But during the winter months, we don't have that same level of volume. But we're going to start right back up in March and keep the program going. We're launching in Queens because, as I say, there's so many of his neighborhoods deserve environmental justice and it produces a lot of yard waste. The administration is focused on both equity and efficient solutions. We also have 250 smart bins for composting in all five boroughs. That's 150 more bins than what we promised. We exceeded the numbers that we promised. These have been a huge success and a perfect example of how we take a successful pilot program and make it permanent. Pilot programs allow us to roll out something in a permanent fashion so we can get it right and learn from what we produce. So this is a great day for yes, a city of yes and getting things done to correct way. I want to turn it over to our commissioner so she can go into the details of the program. But job well done. Such a period of time. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Adams. I am going to start my remarks today with the fact that may blow all of your minds. And that is that New Yorkers leave 24 million pounds of residential trash and recycling on the curbs every single day. That's three pounds of trash for every New Yorker. And as the mayor said, we know that about one third of that or 8 million pounds a day is organic material. Today, that organic material goes in the black trash bags where it's commingled with all the other household trash and it sits on the curbs serving as we've said before and all you can eat buffet for rats. Adding more insult to injury. It then gets land filled where the material decomposes and produces harmful methane gas for years to come. The new program that we're announcing today changes all of that in its first instance for the entire borough of Queens, which represents approximately one quarter of all organic waste in the city. The program is designed to take the organic material out of the black bags and instead set it out in rat proof bins. Gone will be the nightly rat feast. But there's more. Instead of decomposing in a landfill and creating toxic greenhouse gases, the material will be composted and turned into soil or processed through an anaerobic digester and turned into renewable energy. So let me tell you a bit about how the program will work. Let's start with the very basics. We'll take your leaves, we'll take your yard waste, we'll take all your food waste, we'll take all food soiled paper that's napkins, that's paper plates. Just set it out once a week on your organics collection day and we'll come collect it. Leaves and yard waste can go in a bag on the ground. Food waste has to go in one of the bins. Until October 1st, Queens residents can order a free brown bin from us and we will send it right to their doorsteps. We're also proactively sending brown bins to every building in Queens that has 10 or more units. If you don't order a bin from us, no issue. You can use any bin that you want. We just ask that that bin have a lid to keep out the rats. I have long said that the next organics program that we roll out in New York City must be our last. So I want to take a moment to distinguish the program that we are rolling out today from previous programs attempted in New York City. First, as the mayor said, it's the single largest rollout ever on October 3rd. We are turning on the entire borough of Queens. Second, it is the most equitable organics program ever rolled out in New York City. And that is very much tied up in our decision to start in Queens, the most diverse county in the country. Third, the program is way more cost effective than previous programs. And this is an area where the mayor pushed us really hard. Per district collection costs for this program are less than half the cost of previous programs. We achieve these savings by finding some extreme routing fleet and workforce efficiencies. And finally, we do hope and expect that this program will be more effective than any program previously rolled out, i.e. one that people actually use because it's being offered as a stress free, new service to all Queens residents. For organics to work, it needs to penetrate beyond the true believers. And for that to happen, it needs to be simple to use. So here's what we got. No signups or expressions of interest or other hoops to jump through our trucks will roll to every address in Queens once a week period. And no particular bin that you have to use as I mentioned before, you can order a free brown bin from us or you can use your own bin. I want to be very clear that while Queens residents definitely do have cause to celebrate today, we're not leaving the rest of the city out of the organics action. We are also announcing a massive expansion of our smart compost bins that the one in orange, 250 new bins in total to parts of Northern Manhattan, the South Bronx, Central Brooklyn and Satin Island. This blows past our previous commitment of 100 new bins. New Yorkers want to do the right thing. And with this program, it will be easy for them. Starting October 3rd in Queens, let's close down the rat buffet by getting food out of the black bags. And let's shutter the methane factory by turning organic material into compost and green energy. And now it is my pleasure to introduce the Queens Borough President, Donovan Richards. And I just want to say, before it was Queens Borough President Richards, and before it was Public Safety Chair Richards, it was Environmental Protection Chair Richards. So it is a particular pleasure to have him with us here today. Whoa, let's give it up. Well, Commissioner, what a historic day and Mr. Mayor, what a historic day for Queens. And I of course want to acknowledge the Queen's Solid Waste Advisory Board, who also did a lot of work to advocate for this particular initiative to hit Queens, especially when it was rolled back. And in lieu of being at the Kendrick Lamar concert last night, Mr. Mayor, I'm going to try to say some words and hip hop, you know, the brown bins are back. Put in your food scraps, rats, you're about to lose your swag. Take that. That was corny. Thank you, Katie. But truly an honor to be here once again. What a historic day, frankly, for our entire planet. As we announced this groundbreaking expansion of our city's curbside composting program right here in the world's borough. Come on, y'all don't sound excited about this. I've never been more excited to talk trash in Queens. This expansion will bring curbside composting to all 2.4 million residents of the world's borough, which is a major step forward in protecting our environment and our earth. Thanks to this expansion, a huge amount of our boroughs waste will be diverted away from landfills, where it would have been left to decay into methane, a harmful greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming as we sit out here on this 100 degree day. Instead, this waste will be converted into usable compost or into clean and renewable energy that will enable us to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our planet so dangerously. Queens knows firsthand about the negative impacts of climate change, having experienced Hurricane Sandy and Ida and many other deadly severe weather events that have been exacerbated by global warming. So we in this borough know that immediate and decisive action has to be taken to address this global warming crisis before more lives are lost unnecessarily. The expansion of curbside composting we are announcing today just the kind of action we urgently need to see. I want to thank the mayor and the commissioner and her team at sanitation for the expansion altogether. Today's announcement combined with the Senate's passage of the climate protection provisions included in the inflation reduction act that it approved yesterday should give all of us hope for the future because these events prove that if we put our minds to it and are all working together, we can take the decisive steps to combat global warming. So I'm very excited to be here today for this important announcement taking place here at the Unisphere boroughs iconic symbol of our planet. This symbol reminds us we all have a duty to protect our fragile environment so that today's children like my son D three and his pizza scraps will surely be going into Ben and the children of future generations will be able to thrive and prosper like previous generations have with announcements like the one we are making today. I'm confident we are moving in the right direction, ensuring a brighter future for our borough. And once again, just want to say congratulations to everybody who made this day possible. Queens is leading the way into the future. Thank you. Also, we're joined by D P commissioner, Rick Agawala. Rick, thank you for just your years, years as you help us clean up this environment. So why don't we open to a few on topic questions and we do a few off topics. Okay. You mentioned wanting to eliminate methane. Is that thing not a byproduct of the So what we're going to do with the anaerobic digesters is we capture all of the gas that would naturally come out of it and instead we sell it as renewable energy. In terms of the soil, what happened? Where does that go? Thank you for that question. Actually, we have bags of the soil that we produce at our Staten Island compost facility here today for all of you. That soil is, you know, produced pretty much year round. And we give it to the parks department, we give it to community groups, we sell it to landscapers. So it's, it's a great product and we find lots of different uses for it. This isn't a mandatory program because it's only one bro so far. But how will you encourage especially larger buildings to do this? You know, it requires like buy in from the building manager and the super already starting trash and then I guess sort of sort of another thing. And I know, you know, if you lived in one of the community districts that had the original pilot, I know a lot of building just didn't do it because it was like an extra burden on that. I don't know if there's any outreach or stuff like that. Yeah, thank you for that question, Katie. A few things. We took a good hard look at all of the past and present composting programs that have been rolled out in York City and the item that you point out that some of the larger buildings didn't participate and therefore didn't their residents didn't have the ability to participate in the program that jumped out as a big learning from those programs. And so what we're doing in this program is we are automatically sending a brown bin to every building in Queens that has 10 or more units. Everyone else if you live in a smaller building, you just sign it, you know, fill out a form and we'll send the bin to you. But we believe that by sending the bins to those larger buildings, we will make it easier on building management to accommodate the program and actually, instead of easier on building management to accommodate the program, I would say harder for them to tell their residents that they are not participating in the program. So what I would say to residents is if you live in a building and you want to participate in the composting program, say to your building manager, we know that you have a brown bin. It was delivered to you. The city of New York delivered one to you. Where is it? I'd like to put my food scraps inside. I don't know. Did you read that as threatening? You know, because I just think it's the question of, you know, this had happened in the pilot air and a lot of people just use those brown bins for whatever they felt like. I just don't know if we really could catch on in a larger building. So Katie, as we discussed before, we can't make this, I think we can't and we shouldn't make this mandatory at this time partially because it's only being rolled out in Queens. So it would be an undue burden on building managers in Queens. But what we'd really like for this program is for Queens to show the rest of the city that this is that this can be done effectively, that people will participate. So in all seriousness, we really ask all building managers in Queens participate in the program. We are making it so easy. There are no sign ups. You're getting a bin for free. You don't even have to ask for a bin. We're sending it to you. We're really trying to do everything we can to learn from the mistakes of previous programs. What is the history of composting in these cities? I'm not familiar with it. What about the other boroughs? So a lot of drama. So there have been composting programs that have been rolled out in the city like going on 10 years and they get rolled out and then they get paused and then they start up again. We designed this program to be the last composting program that we roll out in New York City. This is by far the cheapest, the most efficient, the easiest for New Yorkers to use, and this program takes from all of the learnings of the previous decade of programs and addresses any and every issue that we saw. So the great hope is that Queens residents will use the program. We know it's an affordable program for the city and we'd love to roll it out beyond Queens. We just need to see what happens in Queens. I'm very hopeful. So right now we have seven districts operating in a voluntary pilot. That pilot's different. You have to sign up and express interest and jump through a lot of hoops to participate in it. And what we've found is we have less than 10 percent of buildings participating in those programs. I believe that New Yorkers want to do the right thing and if we make it easy enough for them, they will do the right thing. And so we really have framed this program and developed this program not to be another requirement on New Yorkers but to be a net new service that we are offering them. You have leaves and yard waste. You already naturally separate that stuff out. There is no fuss, no must with separating yard waste and leaves. Just put it out on your organics day instead of your trash day. How are you? This is our great park workers. Go right over to your bin. Michael, do you see how easy this is? I know you were hands on. Look at that. Y'all can buy one of these at any of your home goods store. And it works. Thank you for keeping our parks clean, okay? If you are off tropics, you know, you're going to spend your income. Good to see you, brother. What is the status now? Where have you found places for all of them? And what do you think about this program? First, I'm not quite sure how you got that headline this morning because in our conversation yesterday, no one said that migrants didn't come here because they didn't feel safe. We were very clear that misleading information that was coming out of Texas, people thought when they got off the buses, they were going to be arrested or apprehended. And I think that the governor, what he's doing is just so inhumane. And we were happy to have a mayor who greeted the asylum seekers instead of putting them, placing them on a bus with a 44-hour ride, very few breaks, no food, no direction, and clear information. It was a good job with the coordination of volunteers and what our office did in the morning. And so our goal is every asylum seeker that comes to New York, we are going to get them shelter and support that they need. Speaking about resources, what specifically are you asking from the federal government? What specific number when it comes to financial aid? I also heard that you guys are providing hotel rooms for asylum seekers, just hoping to clarify with that. And have you spoken to Schumer or any of our other federal partners about the assistance needed for the city? Yes, we have a call set up with the White House. They want to help. They made it clear. They want to give us the assistance that we need, our team, and I will be on that call. We're going to brief our congressional delegation to share what we need. Our deputy mayor of Human Services is doing a complete analysis of what's needed and what the dollar and the price tag. This is a moving configuration right now because we're averaging roughly anywhere could be from a number to 50 a day to 100 a day. And so until we can wrap our heads around that exact number, we have to go with the estimate, but we need the resources to assist. When it comes down to our hotels, we have a requirement and a mandate by law as being a right to shelter city. We have a requirement to house within a period of time and we're going to use every available means to do so. And that is what we're doing and we're living up to that mandate. Just in terms of, I know you said it's an estimate at this point. I think so we don't know how many have arrived so far and going forward. What does it look like? How often and how many people are going to be arriving from Texas? Well, the governor of Texas has made it clear what we always knew he was doing. He finally acknowledged he is shipping people who have traveled for months packing them on buses and sending them to New York. Our social services agency will give you the exact amount, but we talk about thousands that are here and that we're providing services for. What also was extremely revealing yesterday is that there were some who wanted to go to other cities where they have families and they just packed them on a bus without any direction. And we learned that many people had to be reticketed. They wanted to go somewhere else, but they just specifically targeted New York. They being the governor of Texas. It's just a mean and cruel thing that he's doing. Someone's seeking refuge from leaving a horrific environment and this is how we're treating them in Texas. Not the people of Texas, but the governor of Texas, but that's not who we are as New Yorkers. What's your message to him, Governor? I assume you haven't spoken to him. What's your message to him? Be a true American. This is a place where the Statue of Liberty sits in the harbor and we say bring us your tide. Those who are yearning to be free. That's what these asylum seekers are doing. And I don't think anything is more anti-American than shipping people on a bus 45-hour trip without any of the basic needs that they have a direction. Or coordination. Coordination. We have no idea the number of people. We have no idea of where their final destinations are. He's just totally disregarding the human part of this. There's a humanitarian part of being an American and I think that there's nothing more anti-American than what he's displaying right now. To use yesterday's bus arrival as kind of a microcosm of the situation at large when you were at. Only 14 got off. Where did the others get off? Where were they expected to go? Where are the shelters that take the 14 and whoever else arrives in the city? We do not place people in shelters based on their demographic, their ethnicity, or they need. We give shelter and wherever there's an available bed we give the shelter for that. And out of just right to some form of decency and privacy we're not going to pinpoint and say this asylum seeker went to this shelter. That is not what we're going to do. From my understanding the question about where did they get off of the lack of coordination with the bus they're not parking in the Port Authority. And so we don't know what trips were made, what stops were made along the way. And so if you are dropping people off along the way in a new country and you may not have full understanding of the language it's just inhumane. At least if we know how to coordinate this we can provide the services like we did the commission of of our immigration is a commissioner of and our other commissioners were there we can coordinate better instead of having people brought to the city without any support. The ones that got off the bus in New York where did they get the tickets because I believe some of them then left the city. There were some there were some amazing partners there who were identifying those who needed to be reticketed and they were assisting. And our goal is to bring them into our shelters some did some did not some were able to be reticketed and went to new locations. But our goal is to give people in shelters have the intake do a complete analysis of their needs and then as much as we can accommodate those needs. You say the new locations they went to I don't know they had those one-on-one conversations with them. Hey Mr. Mayor again on the the asylum seeker issue last Friday you said you were talking to the administration you kind of said before that you guys have been in talks your administration and they are invited. Why is it taking so long to get an answer and on the resources question. You know I I understand it's funding you're seeking from the federal government but are you also seeking resources like the National Guard are there other things specifically that the city's determinant needs to kind of address the situation. We are at the point where we are managing this crisis. You know what I always say we pivot and shift based on the needs that are in front of us. But we know we're not going to wait until it's unmanageable. Right now is at a serious state you know we know that we have a homeless crisis in the city and right now we are the state where we must get the assistance from the federal government. On Friday we were the teams were speaking on a lower level and now we're going to have a higher level conversation with the White House and they have appeared to be extremely receptive to the needs and they see what's happening in the city and we're looking forward to those conversations. Okay I believe the call is today but as soon as we do we're going to we're going to let you know. Thank you. Thank you all.