Community Composting Partnership Opportunity with ILSR: USDA Cooperative Agreements for Composting and Food Waste Reduction

The mission of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), founded in 1974, is to provide innovative strategies, working models, and timely information to support environmentally sound and equitable community development. For 50 years, ILSR has worked on waste and recycling issues. They wrote the first national zero waste agenda for action and were the first to demonstrate that 25% recycling was possible, followed by 50%. In the 1990s, ILSR – in cooperation with the U.S. EPA – created the Waste Reduction Record-Setters Project to identify successful waste reduction programs in communities, businesses, and other organizations and to encourage their replication.

ILSR’s Composting for Community Initiative (ilsr.org/composting) is advancing composting to enhance local soils and community health, support local food production, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions, cut waste, and create community development opportunities. Their strength is sharing model programs and policies and their lessons learned to accelerate growth. They facilitate and lead a national Community Composter Coalition and support this expanding network by providing workshops, policy guides, best management practices, outreach materials, webinars, networking opportunities, training, and more.

Most recently, ILSR created three short videos for the EPA highlighting the economic, environmental, and social benefits of community composting. They are featured on EPA’s new Community Composting website. They have authored numerous composting-related reports and guides, including Growing Local Fertility: A Guide to Community Composting, Yes! In My Backyard: A Home Composting Guide for Local Government, Guide to Composting Onsite at Schools, Community Composting Done Right: A Guide to Best Management Practices and Oh, Rats! How to Avoid Rodents at Community Composting Sites.

As a nationally recognized research, policy, and technical assistance organization, ILSR is uniquely suited to carry out this project. ILSR staff are composting experts and trained compost site operators and are well-connected to many professionals in the field. Access to education and training can enable composters of all sizes to succeed, troubleshoot independently, and produce high-quality compost. To meet this community need, in 2014, ILSR launched the Neighborhood Soil Rebuilders (NSR) community composter training program to teach community leaders how to compost on a small scale for local food production and to adapt the rigor of the commercial composting industry practices to the small scale. The training program is designed to teach how to compost at community sites such as schools, gardens, and urban farms. In addition to teaching how to avoid odors, pathogen problems, and unwanted critters, the program teaches how to produce high-quality compost, manage volunteers, and engage the community.

ILSR’s Community Composting 101 certificate course, launched in 2022, provides an overview of the importance of and science behind composting and recommended best practices for implementing community composting programs. It includes an introduction and seven video-based training modules. This program has issued 300 certificates of completion and provided access to training for more than 870 people nationwide since 2021 via the Community Composting 101 online course alone.