Education & Outreach to Reduce Contamination in Composting

  • Apr 2, 2025
  • Linda Bilsens Brolis, Jordan Ashby
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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 education and outreach strategies to reduce contamination at composting sites.

    Contamination is a major challenge for composting at all scales, often requiring significant investments of labor, time, and money to manage. To paraphrase Einstein, the smart person solves a problem, but the genius avoids it.

    Watch the recording of this webinar to hear how innovative education and outreach strategies targeted at program participants – including social marketing campaigns to impact behavior – can reduce contamination issues at the source. If you’re involved in an existing composting initiative or interested in supporting composting in your community, this webinar is for you.

    This live webinar took place on April 2, 2025.

    Watch the Recording

    Presenters shared tips and lessons learned on using outreach and education to avoid contamination in drop-off and curbside collection programs. A moderated Q&A session followed the presentations.

    Part 2 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 offered a deep dive into three aspects of contamination and composting. 

    This webinar is part two of a three-part series on reducing contamination in composting. Part one, Tackling Contamination at Composting Sites, took place February 25th, 2025. Part 3, Measuring Contamination in Composting Programs, took place on June 12th, 2025. 

    Watch the recordings of our past composting-related webinars.

    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

    Justin Senkbeil – Chief Executive Officer, CompostNow (NC)

    Justin Senkbeil is the CEO and co-founder of CompostNow Inc., a Raleigh-based company that provides composting subscription services and products. Since 2012, he has led efforts to divert compostables from landfills to create fertile soil. Recognized in 2022 as one of the Top 100 Impact CEOs globally, Justin is a dedicated social and environmental entrepreneur committed to community and organizational growth. CompostNow has developed best practices to keep contamination rates low in its drop-off and curbside collection and composting programs. Justin’s presentation will dive into program specifics and successful cases studies for how contamination can be avoided and managed.

    Kelsey Bailey – Organics Circular Economy Program Manager, King County Solid Waste Division (WA)

    King County leads the region in working toward zero waste and climate goals that include innovative upstream (prevention) and downstream (application) efforts to keep food and organic material out of the landfill. As the Organics Circular Economy Program Manager for the County, Kelsey leads programs that bolster the regional compost market, with a dedication to closing the organics loop. Some of these efforts include 1-1 technical assistance from soils experts on compost application, behavior change/education campaigns to residents on composting right, and participation in policy efforts to increase diversion and produce quality soil amendments. King County’s Compost Right campaign found on the EPA’s Composting Food Scraps in Your Community: A Social Marketing Toolkit demonstrates key social marketing principles, such as language access, cultural relevance, emphasis on visuals, and centering audiences that want to be shown and/or helped to do the desired behavior.

    Joey Schmitt – Director, Action Research Inc. (CA)

    Action Research creates and implements community-based social marketing programs to spark positive behavior change. It has worked on dozens of successful behavior change projects including those addressing water quality, waste, energy, and conservation. Joey has over 10 years of experience directing projects for government, non-profit, and private-sector clients. He has a master’s degree in Experimental Psychology and is an expert at designing and evaluating evidence-based behavior change programs incorporating social and behavioral science insights. He has conducted extensive field research on environmental attitudes and conservation behavior change, and you can find his most recent publications in The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing and the peer-reviewed journal Energy.

    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 1 and 3 in the series.

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