The 8th National Cultivating Community Composting Forum (CCC24), hosted by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in partnership with Rust Belt Riders, took place from October 17 – 19, 2024 in Cleveland, Ohio.
During the course of three transformative days, over 160 composters, haulers, farmers, regulators, researchers, public servants, industry leaders, and allies from diverse organizations worked together to tackle some of the most pressing issues facing community composting while building collective power to grow the movement.
Together, they represented over 110 unique organizations from 30 U.S. states and 5 countries. Included in these attendees were over 60 scholarship awardees.
Dorian Martin, Rust Belt RidersHearing others share their challenges and successes in composting and food security gave me a new perspective on the value of the work we do at Rust Belt Riders.
Navigating a changing industry.
This year’s forum focused on collective problem-solving and knowledge-sharing around the challenges and opportunities in a changing organics landscape. With composting increasingly recognized as a climate and healthy soils solution, the composting industry is seeing increased federal funding, government attention, and public interest. It’s an exciting time of growth. Yet the moment also presents challenges — growing competition, emerging technologies, changing policies are just a few of the threats. In the wider composting industry, community composters are often left out of key conversations, despite being trailblazers in the space.
But at CCC24, community composters didn’t just have a seat at key conversations — they led them. Rather than a typical conference format with panels and presentations, CCC24’s programming was participant-driven, providing opportunities for attendees to host or attend conversations on topics of their choice.
In the forum’s opening keynote, Domingo Morales, founder of Compost Power in New York City, told the story of how he went from being afraid to even touch compost to composting food scraps across NYC public housing communities similar to the one he grew up in. His keynote set the tone for the forum, showcasing the social and environmental benefits of community composting while posing provocative questions for the attendees to consider during the forum and beyond: how can community composters harness technology and the changing industry to up their game while still staying true to their mission? What does a multi-scalar approach to composting look like?
Following the keynote, attendees began the forum by building a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing their field in areas like policy, scaling up, education and outreach, environmental justice, and more.
Attendees also hosted generative conversations on topics that aren’t typically had in composting spaces or are challenging to have remotely. Conversations on the connection between compost and art, composting as a reentry service, and compost and spirituality were just a few that could be heard around the room.
While CCC24 facilitated collective visioning, it also was a space for concrete action. Over the course of the two days of forum programming, attendees worked together to generate and collectively prioritize actionable projects to move the community composting movement forward. Plans to take advantage of federal grants, working groups around standardized data collection, and connecting composters and equitable green spaces, were just a few ideas that came out of action planning groups.
Ultimately, at CCC24 composters and allies alike connected, envisioned, and asserted that the community composting will continue to have a seat at the table in the changing global organics recycling industry.
Grounding the work.
CCC24 included a field day where participants could select one of three activities and engage in the field to better understand what community composting in Cleveland looked like. Cleveland, a recent awardeee of a USDA Composting and Food Waste Reduction Cooperative Agreement, serves as a model for public-private partnerships nationwide.
Workshop: Worker-Owned Cooperatives
Michael Robinson, co-founder of Rust Belt Riders and Treasurer of the Board for Cleveland Owns, ran a detailed and inspiring workshop on the formation and cultivation of existing worker-owned enterprises. Attendees had the chance to discuss bylaws, organizational structure, power-sharing, resource-sharing, and more.
Tour of Large-Scale Composting Site
A tour of Earth N Wood’s 85-acre landscaping yard (the largest site of all the tours) allowed participants to get their hands dirty and see a site that processes leaf and wood with loaders, trommels, and star screens to make National Organic Program and non-National Organic Program compost.
Tour of Closed-Loop Composting Sites
Tours of Rid-All Farm and Case Western Reserve University Farm served as closed-loop inspiration for the over 80 registrants in attendance. Rid All Green Partnership’s site in the City of Cleveland showcased a nursery, aquaponics system, hydroponic system, beekeeping, greenhouse, and a four-acre Class-2 composting facility where large active piles generate compost for on-site use. The site is a hub for youth education, entrepreneurial training, and environmental justice. Case Western Reserve University Farm is a 400-acre property where Rust Belt Riders hauls material generated by the University.
Connecting a community.
At the core of “community composting” is the community.
At CCC24, community composters’ creative engagement skills were on full display during the forum. The reception included an open mic where attendees shared their best compost-related poetry, music, art, and dance. (Check out ILSR’s 50th anniversary storytelling project and Domingo Morales’ music video “Scraps” for a taste.) The final evening also featured a hilarious performance by trained clown and obsessive compost-lover Alex Tatarsky exploring the intersection of compost and clowns. Outside of scheduled programming, attendees created their own meet-ups, one cooking fish inside of a compost pile and another polar plunging into Lake Erie.
Nora Tjossem, BK ROTIn composting, we know that the smallest organisms create mighty change when working in concert and in numbers — and community composters are no different! The CCC24 forum added another layer of “community” to community composting for me, bringing us together to work through our shared struggles toward aligned values.
Through the forum conversations, reception, and meet-ups, CCC24 served to strengthen the web of community composters across the country and the world.
Relationships were created and ideas formed that will be carried far beyond the forum, through both tangible action planning groups and abstract seeds planted that will germinate in years to come.
As one attendee summed it up:
The CCC Forum provides a space for community composters to gather and share notes, and support each other. We are stewards of and participants in our communities, but oddly enough, our jobs can exist in isolation sometimes. Many of us have our heads down, feet planted in food scraps, hands busy working compost piles and creating sustainable systems with the communities we work in. The Forum allows us to show up for one another outside of our immediate surroundings! Showing up to a space where we are seen and heard and understood by each other is rejuvenating and essential to our work.
Join the Community Composter Coalition.
The Community Composter Coalition is a network of community composters that is building the movement by connecting early adopters, spreading lessons learned, and inspiring new operations. The Cultivating Community Composting Forums are just one of many ways community composters connect and support each other in the coalition.
As one participant put it: “The Community Composter Coalition is my very own mycelium network.”
If you are a community composter or direct supporter and want to be the first to know about our next forum, join ILSR’s Community Composter Coalition today.
