Tackling Contamination at Composting Sites

  • Feb 25, 2025
  • Linda Bilsens Brolis
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  • Presentations & Events
  • Composting for Community
  • Community Composting
  • On-farm Composting
  • Climate and Environmental Justice
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    A webinar sharing practical tips and strategies to reduce contamination at composting sites.

    Is managing contamination a challenge for you at your composting site or initiative? Are you hesitant about adding food scraps to your composting initiative due to concerns around added contamination? Or is your community considering investing in a depackager in hopes that it will solve contamination issues?

    This live webinar took place on February 25th, 2025.

    Access Webinar Recording

    In this webinar, three food scrap composters shared tips and lessons learned about cutting contamination in their finished product. Following the presentations, there was a moderated Q&A session.

    If you’re involved in an existing composting initiative or interested in supporting composting in your community – whether you are a composter, hauler, regulator, policymaker, local business, urban or rural farmer, environmentalist, or public interest advocate – this webinar is for you.

    Part 1 of 3 in ILSR’s Reducing Contamination at Composting Sites Webinar Series.

    Contamination is a major challenge for composting at all scales, often requiring significant investments of labor, time, and money to manage. This webinar series offers a deep dive into three aspects of contamination and composting.

    Watch Part 2: Education & Outreach to Reduce Contamination in Composting and Part 3: Measuring Contamination in Composting Programs.

    Registration

    Registration is $20.

    Free registration is available for government, farmers, and members of the Community Composter Coalition (CCC). Government should use the discount code GOV, farmers should use FARMER, and CCC members should use CCC at checkout for free registration.

    If you’re a community composter and would like to apply to be a part of the Coalition, learn more and apply today!

    Panelists

    Pierce Louis – Co-Founder, Dirt Hugger (WA)

    Pierce Louis is the Co-Founder of Dirt Hugger located in Dallesport, Washington. Dirt Hugger was founded in a backyard in 2010 and has rapidly expanded to process ~60,000 tons per year across multiple locations. Pierce does a little bit of everything from running loaders, tuners, and screeners to accounting, finance, sales and marketing. Wearing a different hat each day keeps him motivated and challenged to help small businesses grow through goal-oriented and driven teamwork. Pierce is a past president of the US Composting Council and currently serves on its Board.  Dirt Hugger was one of 10 U.S. compost manufacturers that participated in Closed Loop Partners’ field study to measure and characterize contamination in the composting process.

    Ryan Green – Owner/Lead Composter, Happy Trash Can (MT)

    Ryan Green has over 10 years of experience working in the organics recycling industry, starting as a work study job collecting food scraps from from the cafeteria while attending Unity College in Maine, working for the NYC Compost Project hosted by the Lower East Side Ecology Center to currently running Happy Trash Can Curbside Composting alongside his wife, Adrienn Huckabone, for the last 9 years.  Ryan and the HTC crew divert over 2.2 million pounds of food scraps annually and work with local institutions like Bozeman Solid Waste, Montana State University, and Bridger Bowl ( to name a few) to expand composting in the Bozeman, Montana community.  HTC also took part in the Closed Loop Partners “degradation and contamination” study 2 years ago.  Ryan is committed to helping expand composting efforts not only in Bozeman but beyond. 

    Tom Gilbert – Owner/Operator, Black Dirt Farm (VT)

    Tom Gilbert is the owner/operator of Black Dirt Farm in Stannard, Vermont.  Black Dirt Farm is a diverse and integrated agroecological farm that includes food scrap collection, laying hens foraged on compost, compost and worm castings production, and crop production. Tom has been working in and managing food scrap collection and composting operations, while also working as a community organizer, for 25 years. Previously, as Executive Director of Highfields Center for Composting, Tom oversaw the organization’s Close the Loop Vermont campaign, to develop community composting systems throughout Vermont, as well as its composting and collection operations, and Research and Education Program, which produced the Vermont Compost Operator Certification course. Tom’s remarks will focus on preventing contamination by recognizing source separation as a change in behavior that needs to be supported.

    Moderator

    Brenda Platt – Director, Composting for Community Initiative, Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR)

    Brenda and her team at ILSR are supporting community-scale composters via forums, webinars, podcasts, guides, policies, training, and more. In 2017, the US Composting Council awarded her its H. Clark Gregory Award for outstanding service to the composting industry through grassroots efforts. In 2019, BioCycle magazine featured Brenda as one of its organics recycling trailblazers. She has a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from The George Washington University.

    This project has been funded in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under a Recycling, Education & Outreach (REO) assistance agreement to ILSR.

    Watch part 2 and 3 in the series.

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