New York Today: Take Out the Compost

Peter Menzel and Faith D’AluisioThe Wimms-Brant family of Brooklyn with a week’s worth of their trash (right) and recyclables (left).

Updated 10:02 a.m.

Good Thursday morning to you.

Pause before you toss that banana peel.

As a city, our daily trash haul is substantial.

It weighs about as much as 260 subway cars, and most of it goes to landfills.

To change that, the city is expanding compost collection to several neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens this spring.

Officials will gather at Times Square today to talk about the expansion, and unveil portraits of eight families from around the country surrounded by the trash they produced in a week.

One of the families lives in East New York, Brooklyn, another in Jackson Heights, Queens.

“Looking at their trash, you can pretty much figure out their lifestyle,” said the photographer, Peter Menzel, who worked with his wife, Faith D’Aluisio.

Lots of food packaging implicated the teenage boy in the Brooklyn home.

Less food waste in the Queens family’s trash suggested immigrant roots, Mr. Menzel said.

They had thrown out only what they couldn’t eat â€" banana peels and coffee grounds.

These are the sections of the city scheduled for compost collection:

Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope in Brooklyn, and parts of Glendale, Middle Village and Maspeth in Queens.

This expansion of the city’s pilot project will bring the total number of composting households to nearly 100,000. The results will be reviewed by the City Council next year.

“It’s actually an enormous opportunity,” said Kathryn Garcia, the sanitation commissioner. “If you’re looking to view waste as a resource.”

Here’s what else you need to know for Thursday.

WEATHER

Coffee advisory: iced.

Another beautiful day, with a high of 64.

Clouds convene over the city tonight.

COMMUTE

Subways: Check latest status.

Rails: Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- On his 100th day in office, Mayor de Blasio gives a talk on the city’s future, and his brief mayoral past, at Cooper Union. Noon.

- A full schedule of protests on the City Hall steps: Advocates call on the mayor to make “climate resiliency” a priority, at 9 a.m. …

- … Protest credit checks by employers at 10 a.m.; call for alarms on school doors at 11 a.m.; and protest downsizing Section 8 for the elderly and disabled, at noon.

- Free hamburgers, as Smashburger opens a new location on 33rd Street west of Fifth Avenue. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

- Two million pounds of kosher food are distributed for Passover ahead of the holiday, in Brighton Beach. 9:30 a.m.

- Los Angeles’s “Pancakes and Booze Art Show” comes to the M1-5 Lounge in TriBeCa. 7 p.m. [$5, with free pancakes]

- AIPAD, the annual photography dealers’ show, opens at the Park Avenue Armory. 11 a.m. [$30 per day]

- Protesters “occupy the High Line” to demand better working conditions in nonunion buildings and more affordable housing in the neighborhood. 4:30 p.m.

- Ann Northrop, co-host of “Gay USA,” gives a talk on the “Making of a Lesbian Activist,” at N.Y.U. 5:30 p.m. [Free]

- Critics debate the “Menstruation Machine,” a contraption that acquaints wearers of both genders with “the pain and tribulation of menstruation.” MoMA. 6:30 p.m. [$30]

- A talk by Monica Hanna, an activist using Twitter to save Egypt’s antiquities, at Cooper Union. 6:30 p.m. [Free, R.S.V.P.]

- For Ai Wei Wei: Authors including Jennifer Egan and Chang-Rae Lee protest in solidarity with the Chinese artist outside the main Brooklyn Public Library. 7 p.m.

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Mayor de Blasio reflected on his first 100 days in an interview. [New York Times]

- “Stop Telling Women to Smile:” A Brooklyn artist’s project about street harassment has gone national. [New York Times]

- A dog raced a Metro-North train for more than a mile on Wednesday, and lived to wag about it. [New York Times]

- A stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn is the first to get the “Vision Zero” treatment, with lower speed limits. [WNYC]

- An 84-year-old man injured who was ticketed for jaywalking and injured in a scuffle with the police will not face charges. [CBS]

- Going, going: The building housing Pearl Paint’s flagship store on Canal Street is for sale. The ad says, ominously, ” the space can be delivered vacant.” [Gothamist] …

- … While yet another bookstore may not be long for Manhattan: Shakespeare & Company. [EV Grieve] …

- … And the J&R electronics kingdom along Park Row has closed, too, though, though J&R says it plans to “rebuild this location into what we hope will be an unprecedented retailing concept and social mecca.” [Gothamist]

- Scoreboard: Orioles fly past Yankees, 5-4. Braves down Mets, 4-3. Magic bedazzle Nets, 115-111.

AND FINALLY …

A student at M.I.T. calculated the optimum route for riding the entire New York subway system in the shortest amount of time.

In 1966.

The student, Peter Samson, used a computer the size of an elevator car.

He and his friends failed to break the record, but tried again.

Michael Miscione, the Manhattan borough historian, recounts those subway races tonight at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn.

And shows never-before-screened footage of one race.

You may now calculate the optimum route for getting to the museum by 6:30.

Sandra E. Garcia contributed reporting.

New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.

What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.

Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.

You can always find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.