Lessons Learned from Vermont’s Universal Recycling Law (ft. Natasha Duarte)

Composting Association of Vermont

Composting Association of Vermont On-Farm Composting Toolkit

Protect Our Soils Coalition

UVM Master Composter Training

• 2024 registration now open – available to everyone, everywhere!

Vermont Farm to Plate Food Cycle Coalition

Food Cycle Coalition

Impact of Vermont’s Food Waste Ban on Residents and Food Businesses, University of Vermont 2023

Hierarchy to Reduce Food Waste & Grow Community, ILSR

Universal Recycling Law – Vermont, ILSR

VT Depackager Stakeholder Process & Related Resources

CAV Webinar: Changing the Culture of Organics Management Through Effective Source Separation

CAV Webinar: Beyond Awareness: Sparking Behavior Change with Behavioral Science

Vermont Law Banning Food Waste Leads to More Compost—and “Separation” Anxiety, Governing.com

Market to Farm: A New Food Waste Disposal Method Raises Fears That Microplastics Will Taint Fields, Seven Days

Jordan Ashby:
Across the country, the community composting movement is growing. Locally based composting provides communities immediate opportunities for reducing waste, improving local soil, creating jobs, and fighting climate change. You’re listening to the Composting for Community Podcast, where we’ll bring you stories from the people doing this work on the ground and in the soil.
I’m your host, Jordan Ashby, from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. In this episode, I have the pleasure of being joined by Natasha Duarte, director of the Composting Association of Vermont. Natasha works to promote the production of the use of compost as vital to soil health through practices that contribute to water quality, plant vigor, and environmental resilience. She also has extensive experience working with rural and small communities to plan and implement solid waste management projects, developing training tools and resources, and delivering training and technical assistance. She’s an instructor for UVMs Master Composter Program and is currently leading a USDA funded project that supports community oriented food scrap composting on farms. Natasha, welcome to the podcast.

Natasha Duarte:
Thanks so much for having me, Jordan.

Jordan Ashby:
We really are excited to have you today. I was just wondering to begin if you could tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into composting.

Natasha Duarte:
Yeah, sure. I’m, gosh, a long, long time backyard composter, but my first experience with community scale composting was when I was in the Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa, and one of the main projects was actually working with farmers to do pit composting of field residue and manure. In that climate it took a whole year, so it was like all this work, and then we buried it and had to wait. It was really exciting to dig it out a year later, and it ended up being really successful. We started off by putting it on the farmer’s least productive part of their lands, which in that year became the most productive part of their lands. So it was really exciting to get involved in that. After that, I came back to the States and got my master’s in soil science. So while I’ve worked as a research soil scientist before getting into the nonprofit world, I think that Senegalese experience was really my first semi-professional composting work that I did.

Jordan Ashby:
That is really amazing. I’ve heard from some other people on my team at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance that they’ve also had experiences composting in other parts of the world where composting tends to be a lot more normal and a lot more part of people’s daily lives. So that’s a cool introduction to composting. Could you paint a little bit more of a detailed picture for us about your community and what community composting means for you today?

Natasha Duarte:
Yeah, so for me as the director of the Composting Association of Vermont, I think of Vermont and even maybe our neighboring states, rural New England, as my broader community. But community composting really is about getting people engaged in understanding the issues around food waste, reducing food waste, understanding the best and highest uses for edible food and then for non-edible food, and really having this network of decentralized, locally managed compost systems that can be maybe four households or it could maybe be a farm that’s pulling in food scraps from a much wider area in a rural setting perhaps. But it’s really all around understanding how these resources are being managed and thinking of them as resources and not as waste. So starting to really shift that waste to resource perception in our communities as we manage these as valuable resources that they are.

Jordan Ashby:
I think that’s something that there’s been this movement towards in general is shifting from thinking about using waste as a noun to using waste as an adjective, like wasted food versus just saying, oh, it’s waste. So thinking about this as a resource is something that is core to, like you were just saying, the community composting movement and more broadly in the composting movement.

Natasha Duarte:
Yeah. Just to build on that, one of the things I like to talk to people about is, at least in the communities that I’m involved with Vermont, there’s a big upcycling move of all kinds of materials that we’ve previously considered waste. But really food scraps and organic material is one of the very few things that we can manage effectively in our own backyards, in our communities, at a really local scale. Whereas if you think about paper or cardboard or glass or metals, plastics, it’s hard for communities to manage those resources. But organics, what a fabulous opportunity to get involved with material management

Jordan Ashby:
Yeah. For sure. I completely agree. That point of having the processing done in the local community where the material is generated is core to ILSR’S definition of community composting. So I think that’s something that we’ll get deeper into in this episode.

But I was wondering now if we could turn to talking a bit about the universal recycling law in Vermont, which has to do with organics, but also encompasses a lot of the other materials that you were just talking about. For a little bit of background, 2012, Vermont passed the first of its kind universal recycling law under Act 148, and this law created a statewide parallel collection program of all mandated recyclable materials, including yard debris and food residuals. This law was phased in over a period of eight years. So beginning in July 2020, the mandatory diversion of all commercial and residential food scraps went into effect. That is something that I know that you’ve been really involved in both in getting this law passed and in amending it, and I was just wondering if you could give us some more background on this.

Natasha Duarte:
So in terms of getting it passed originally, that actually predates me. But the previous now retired director, Pat Sagui, of the Composting Association of Vermont, was certainly involved. The association was integrally involved in the organic section. Like you said, the universal recycling law is much bigger than just organics, but our organization was definitely involved in the early days of that. As you said, it was passed in 2012. We started in 2014 implementing the food scrap diversion for the largest generators within 20 miles of the facility. So that started at 100 generators who produced 104 tons or more per year of food residuals had to start diverting. Then every year we just cut that in half and in half and in half. Then in 2020, food scraps were banned regardless of volume and regardless of distance to a facility that could process it. That gave our state enough time to build out the infrastructure needed to support the law and the effort and implementation.
A couple of things I want to highlight about the law that your listeners might know about, but it’s always good to just remind folks. Integral to the organic portion of the law was the Vermont Food Recovery Hierarchy, and so we were really explicit in the language this idea or the concept of the best and highest use of these materials. So of course we always start with source reduction and then getting edible food to people. If it can’t go to people, food for animals or on farm use, composting, and then anaerobic digestion and energy recovery. So being really explicit that there is this most preferred and least preferred use of these materials.
The other thing that is likely going to be integral to this conversation today is that we define food residual as source separated and uncontaminated material that would be handled or discarded in a manner consistent with that hierarchy. Then also we define source separated as separation of compostable material from non-compostable material at the point of generation. I’m just highlighting that because this is some trigger language that has come back around and has felt that it’s open for interpretation and maybe what do we really mean at the point of generation. So it’s led to some interesting adventures in organics recycling in our state.
I think one of the things that the organic section of this law was intending to do was to clearly separate the food residuals for the organic portion, so like the food scraps and any other organic residuals, from the packaging from anything that is not going to be composted. There’s some gray area around compostable packaging and then lookalikes with that, that we’re not going to get into today. But really the intent was take whatever cannot be composted or fed to animals or donated into the food system or put through anaerobic digestion, I think I said AD before, which is another way of managing organic resources. So if it doesn’t belong in any of those systems, leave it out. You have to separate it. That’s the core concept behind separation.
Really the goal behind that, in my opinion, is to maintain as clean of organic streams as possible. So we are enabled to utilize these materials for their highest and best use. So we can’t have a bunch of junk mixed in with food that we’re putting into the charitable food system in our state, or ideally that we’re feeding to animals. We don’t want them eating plastic and bits of metal. That’s not good on a whole bunch of different levels. So the idea is to just really try to maintain as clean a stream as possible with source separation so we can use it to the highest and best use throughout all layers of the hierarchy, really.

Jordan Ashby:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and thanks for clarifying that a bit. ILSR has a hierarchy to reduce food waste and grow community, which we will have in the show notes so people can check that out. I was wondering if you could now also talk about some of the biggest successes of this law.

Natasha Duarte:
So one of the biggest and unexpected successes from a solid waste law was the positive impact it has had on our charitable food system. So when this law went into effect, all of a sudden the larger producers like grocery stores or Costco type places started diverting edible food into the charitable food system. Even all the way as we got down to smaller generators, the mom and pop stores were also providing food into their local food shelf or food pantry. I don’t have the most updated data, but the estimates are that the volume of food being provided to food insecure Vermonters has more than tripled with this law. I don’t know that that is something that people really anticipated. I know that it actually caused a few hiccups in our charitable food system. I think we only had two distribution centers in the state and not enough refrigerated trucks. Now we have all of this perishable food that we’re trying to distribute. More food came in, we had to figure out new systems on the charitable food system side, and then it teeter-tottered up.
But I think that’s really been a positive effect. I wish I had data showing the actual ripple effect of health and wellbeing of food insecure Vermonters. I don’t have access to that data now. I know some folks in the state are working on it, but that’s really meaningful. Even as there have been some disagreements about implementation of this law, about hauler requirements that were originally part of the law, that’s one of the sections that have been amended and changed a few times over the years. Or even with depackaging and some of these different technologies that are coming online, creating little ripples for us in our state, everyone agrees that feeding hungry Vermonters is a really important and valuable thing. I think that’s really provided for me in some conversations that I’ve had. It is a great touchstone to come back to and really establish common ground and shared values in seeing this as the important resource that it is. So that, for me, I think is one of the biggest wins.

Jordan Ashby:
Yeah. That really highlights what you’re saying about the importance of having a really clear hierarchy of best and highest use. Another win that I was wondering if you could speak to has to do with the social change that this law has led to. In 2023, a University of Vermont study found that 61% of Vermonters reported feeling morally obligated to take steps to keep their food waste out of landfills. Could you speak a bit about what that means to you?

Natasha Duarte:
To me that says that is a culture shift, right? Yes, it’s a survey and it was a well done survey. It doesn’t necessarily capture all of the nuance in our state, but people are paying attention. People are learning about this law and learning about the value of organic resources as opposed to organic waste, and are feeling compacted, for sure, influenced, for sure, by climate change and the flooding that we had last year and all of these impacts.
This is an important way that people can be empowered and get engaged to do something, even if it might feel somewhat intangible at times, especially for folks who are not composting. The majority of people in our state feel that there’s a moral obligation to do it, and that to me is a huge win. I think we’re right now in the last waste characterization study, I think they were estimating somewhere around 50% of the organic material is actually being diverted. We still have work to do. But those beliefs lead action. So I think that’s a huge win for our state and will hopefully continue to propel us to capture more and more of the organic waste from being in landfill.

Jordan Ashby:
Yeah, the social change and the psychological impact is the thing that propels forward the future change and makes sure that people are invested in continuing this law and continuing to improve upon it versus turning around and saying, we should go back to doing what we were at the first stumbling block. So that’s just a really good thing to keep in mind as we go into the next portion of the conversation, which focuses a bit more on some of the stumbling blocks perhaps and the challenges that have come up in implementing this universal recycling loss. So one of the big challenges that we have been hearing from our allies is the use of the packagers in recycling organics in Vermont, and that was something that you just referred to, but could you explain a bit what the packager is and what problems they have presented so far?

Natasha Duarte:
Sure. So depackagers or depackaging equipment is essentially a technology and they come in different sizes and slightly different models in terms of the actual physical mechanism. But basically what the technology does is allows you to put packaged food into a big hopper and it is either paddled or augered. In some way there’s a mechanical separation of the packaging from the food or the organic material inside that packaging. Then it basically spits it out into two streams. So one is the organic material and the other is the packaging material. We do have one depackaging facility in our state now. There’s a current moratorium still on new facilities being built until we get a little bit of a better handle on rules and regulations for what kind of material and when can package material go to these kinds of facilities.
But before we had one in our state, some of the larger generators that had been doing a great job with sort separation and providing some really clean streams for composters in our state, they started just putting everything commingled into a big bin and it was actually being trucked to Maine and being put through a depackaging facility there. It was then going to anaerobic digestion and the digest state was being land applied. Then all of that packaging material, some of which could have been recycled, was actually mangled and mashed together. So that was actually being sent to an incinerator in a community in Maine. That wouldn’t actually, as I understand it, meet Vermont standards and be allowed to function in our state.
So for me, that raises all kinds of environmental justice questions. As a Vermonter, I don’t necessarily feel… I’ll just speak personally, I don’t want my, at this point, waste, because it’s being treated more like waste in some respects being, first of all, trucked. So there’s all this trucking greenhouse gas emissions. Then the packaging material is being incinerated and potentially polluting someone else’s community. If we don’t want it in our community, why is it okay for us to just ship it away and not see it? So then we now have a depackaging facility in our state, just one. So things are still transported, but not quite as far.
But what that did when larger generators started diverting to Maine, it really almost overnight decreased the volume of feedstocks that were going into our local Vermont compost facilities. So there had been a number of facilities that were poised to actually do infrastructure projects to increase the capacity building up to the 2020 full ban. Many of them scrapped those projects. It was really touch and go as to whether some of the smaller organic haulers and small and large compost facilities, what was their future if this was now… The rug got pulled out from under them. They were making capital investments to prepare for this law in our state, and then all of a sudden a fairly large portion was being sent out of state.
Some of the facilities that were hit particularly hard were actually farms that were feeding some of the food scraps to their laying hens. So not only was it making compost, but it was actually animal feed that all of a sudden the whole source dried up. So were, they hadn’t been feeding grain, they were having to buy grain because they didn’t know where their organic material was going to come from. It really threw a monkey wrench in a lot of what many people feel like we had spent, at this point, eight or nine years building our infrastructure, building the systems, working on the source separation training, all of that stuff. The depackaging equipment really just threw a monkey wrench into a lot of that. We’ve adjusted. Just to be clear, I think that there is a real place for depackaging technology in the wide array of tools we have available to us for effectively managing organic resources.
There are either heavily packaged materials or really small single serve packages of food, which we can have the single serving packaging conversation later maybe. But there is material, it makes sense to use this technology. It makes sense to utilize the technology in the way that it is as dialed in as it can be, so it is as effective at removing packaging from the food inside it. My understanding is that it is most efficient with single types of materials. So if you’re doing all tin cans or all a certain kind of plastic packaging, not this mixed recycling or mixed loads of food where you have film plastic and rigid plastic and maybe some metal and different things. It’s just harder to fine tune the equipment to do as good of a job as it could do. So I think it’s really important to not necessarily villainize the technology, but understand the place that it has and not try to treat it as a silver bullet and now no one needs to change their behavior. Just put it all in one thing and send it away.
The last thing I’ll say on this is that I feel like it’s an unfortunate mechanism for further distancing people from the fate of their uneaten food or the food waste or the food scraps or residuals, whatever word you want to use. We’ve spent so much time helping Vermonters understand the importance of not wasting food, the true cost of not wasting food to begin with, and then what happens to that, and really caring about it as a resource. I just feel like the ubiquitous use of depackagers, not only for Vermont but nationally and likely internationally, it just really helps people no longer have a sense of what is even happening, what is the consequence of their behaviors? I think that that’s actually a really important piece that comes with local management, that comes with the community composting approach, or the relationship based approach as opposed to just contracting with someone to take it away and you don’t even know what happens to it. I think it degrades that social awareness.

Jordan Ashby:
Which seems to be one of the largest wins, like you’ve said, so far of the universal recycling law. When people are locally invested and can see directly in their own communities what is happening to the material that they’re generating, they care a lot more about being more careful about source separation at the beginning, like you were talking about, versus being able to just throw it all in together and have it taken away.
We’ll be right back after a short break.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Composting for Community Podcast. If you’re enjoying it, please consider supporting our work with a donation by going to ilsr.org/donate. Your donations make this show, and all the work we do here at ILSR, possible. Visit ilsr.org/donate to make your contribution today. Any amount is sincerely appreciated. If you’re looking for other ways to support us, consider rating or leaving a review of the show wherever you listen to your podcast. These reviews help us reach a wider audience. Thanks again for listening. Now, back to the show.
In 2021, Casella Waste Systems was the company that opened the depackager in your state, in Vermont. It’s important to recognize that Casella Waste Systems is the monopoly player in the Vermont waste industry. They’re the largest waste in organics hauler in Vermont. They own the only landfill in the state, which means that they are profiting off of all tipping fees from all haulers in the state. All of that material that is going to landfill goes also directly into the pockets of Casella. They own and operate the majority of transfer stations and many of the recycling facilities in the state. Also have recently gotten into the composting world, both having composting facilities and with the opening of this depackager in Vermont.
There’s been a lot of writing and I think conversation about the monopoly power and the increasing control that this one company has over the entire waste stream. That also is another aspect that I think is important to talk about when we’re talking about having material go to a variety of different sources being used to feed animals being brought to different composting facilities within the state versus all of it going to one depackager owned by one company that is then profiting off of all of this material that is no longer being brought to these different sources. I was just wondering if you could talk a bit about that. Combating this idea that distributed operations, distributed composting is inefficient or isn’t feasible versus these centralized facilities.

Natasha Duarte:
Yeah, I think you hit on a lot of important points there. So part of it that is the efficiencies you get from economies of scale, right? You’re doing this at scale, you’re doing this broader, that whole model in my mind is really geared towards waste, and I’m using that word purposefully, waste diversion as opposed to resource management or use. I know that maybe to some people that means the same thing. But when you’re talking about now everybody has to divert and no one knows what to do with all this material, we’re going to create these big buckets, like these big system buckets to catch as much as possible and make it easier. The focus on the values that are integrated into Vermont’s law get lost a little bit, right? It all gets downgraded to just diversion for diversion’s sake. If we’re ending up with somewhat contaminated end product, so compost or digest state, whether it’s compost or anaerobic digestion, where do you put that material, right? Do you want that on food producing land? Do you want that on pasture? Do you want that to be growing your food?
It’s really just the lens that you’re looking at it from I think. Is it diversion for diversion’s sake or is it diversion for effective local management of resources. Not just helping people be connected to the front end of that system, so to speak, in terms of diverting their food scraps into local compost, but also the use of that finished compost and the quality of that. So there’s a lot of ties there for me in food sovereignty and local food systems, and we need to keep as clean a stream and high quality product going into that system as we can. If you’re looking at universal recycling in terms of just keep it out of the landfill, you’re going to make very different decisions than if you’re actually looking at universal recycling in terms of best and highest use, local empowerment, really shoring up our local food system.
There’s so many reasons that we don’t have time to go into for the importance of local food systems. The easiest one to point to is just the disruptions with supply chain that we all experienced during the pandemic, just to name one of so many reasons that local food systems are important. So just the more we can see this not as diversion for diversion’s sake and really stay true to keeping as clean a stream of feed stocks going into compost facilities so we get the highest quality out so that we can then close that nutrient loop, put it back in the soil, grow more food, and be more self-sufficient and resilient as communities, I think that is one of the keys.
That’s one of the things that’s lost when you go to centralized systems, and I understand, I think there’s some organic wastes like the wastewater from Ben and Jerry’s ice cream production in our state, thousands and thousands and thousands of gallons every single day. What do you do with that? The choice of how to manage that material is going to be different than how you manage food scraps from a restaurant, both front end and back end.
So I guess I just always fall back to there’s so much organic resources that we’re trying to manage in a community, in a state, in our country, in the world. So how many tools can we have that help us do this effectively? To do that, we need to be thoughtful in the technology that we choose and the systems that we choose to reach those goals.

Jordan Ashby:
Yeah, 100%. Could you just clarify a bit more some of the contamination concerns with depackaging technology?

Natasha Duarte:
Sure. So just full transparency, I’ve never run a depackaging piece of equipment, and I do not manage a depackaging facility, but I’ve done a fair amount of reading and talking, and we can share in the show notes some links to webinars that the Composting Association of Vermont has hosted on this topic and trying to just have all of us be better educated about it. But we know that even with laws passing to get PFAS out of food packaging, it is still there and it’s pretty ubiquitous, and it’s going to take a number of years before we really clean up the upstream sources of these chemicals that we’re concerned about. So for PFAS, for instance, if you’re adding water and mashing together packaging and the food that’s inside the packaging, I don’t think that it’s a stretch to anticipate that there would be heightened levels of PFAS, obviously in the packaging stream that comes out because it’s in the packaging, but also in the organic stream that comes out.
So then there are also certain types of plastic packaging that perform less well through a depackager. So they are either breaking up into shards or cracking and getting little micro pieces of it or being actually broken down, getting through screens and bending up in the resulting organic stream as well from a depackaging facility. This is really, from what I understand, where not all depackagers are equal comes into play. So some have add-ons of different levels of screening and newer pieces of technology integrated into the depackaging equipment that actually does a better job of keeping some of those contaminants out. But if you’re going bottom shelf, cheapest version on the market, you’re likely not capturing as much contamination as you might be able to.
I do just want to emphasize that the Composting Association of Vermont is really concerned about quality compost and organic diversion, but also maintaining those clean streams as much as possible from all sources. So that’s not just depackaging, right? We’re also working hard on the whole culture shift around source separation, effective source separation. So these similar food packaging or other contaminants don’t make their way into compost piles either or into anaerobic digesters. So we collectively, as an industry, need to clean up our game. The best way to do that is to prevent some of these contaminants from getting into the systems at the front end, not trying to sift them out at the back end. So while we’re talking about deep packages, I think it’s also important to remember that many of these similar concerns show up in other management systems.
The unfortunate part about the ubiquitous messaging of utilizing depackagers where you don’t even have to think about source separation anymore, just put it all in one bin and we’ll take care of it for you frame, is that that degrades on all levels, this concept of clean streams at the front end. We’ve seen in Vermont anecdotally more contamination getting into compost streams as well because of the mixed messaging about where is material going and who responsibility is it to do the separation. So one of the things that the use of depackagers, how we’ve started out, and now we’re trying to back off a little bit from and create better rules and regulations, is that we need to be more thoughtful about the public facing messaging and whose responsibility it is.

Jordan Ashby:
Yeah. This point that you made about who is responsible I think is a big question that also comes on the front end. The question can also be asked, who’s creating the plastic to begin with and how do you hold accountable the companies, these large companies, that are promoting plastic use and creating all of this single use material and what work can also be done on the front end to minimize the creation of this material to begin with?

Natasha Duarte:
Yeah, we’ve just started conversations this year with composters and haulers in Vermont as well as our Agency of Natural Resources, Department Of Environmental Conservation, of what levers does the state have maybe that we as businesses or farms or individuals don’t in terms of state funded institutions moving away from the single serving plastic packaging. I think that we had been doing a better job. Then with the pandemic, everyone got really freaked out and everything went back to individual serving sizes. So we don’t touch each other’s stuff. But I think we’re past that, and I do think that there’s a real role for the state to play, especially in institutions that receive state dollars in terms of their procurement and decisions that are being made around single serving procurement.
I just want to fall back a little bit on, in my experience in all of my work really in Vermont, but also in New England, is that when organic material management is done on a relationship base level versus a contractual level, and by that I’m differentiating between when people understand where their food scraps are going and when it gets put down with their trash and recycling and they have no idea the fate of their food scraps, so that’s more contractual. That’s more what I mean by contractual versus this relationship-based or community-based approach. They’re not going to get it perfect, but the relationship-based management of organic resources often inherently has tighter communication systems built into it. So if certain things are sneaking in like the produce stickers or whatever it is, there’s often a mechanism already in place to easily remind people and do that iterative training on source separation and messaging around you might think you’re just letting one thing slip in, but 1000 people are, so now here’s this big pile of trash I had to pick out.
I think it’s far more effective to have people engaged in the system than to have no idea of the consequences of their decisions. So that’s just one of the pieces that I feel working with communities, working with schools, farms, gardens, churches, places of worship, food shelves, town halls, neighborhood hubs, all of these places that community composting is popping up. Those are producing the cleanest streams in and probably the higher quality out. That’s not to say that this small decentralized scale is a solution for all. I recognize that a lot of the communities that I work in are rural, but there’s enough organic resources to go around.
So let’s manage as much as we can as local as we can, really keeping not only the processing and the management in communities, but also the use of the finished composting communities to support community resilience, especially in the face of climate change. Increase our local soil health and soil sponge to soak up extra water or to release water when we’re having a drought. That is all inherently part of this decentralized community engaged approach. I recognize that it’s not the solution for every community in total, but community composters can manage an amazing volume of organic material. So I think it’s great to give them the chance and the first crack at it.

Jordan Ashby:
That is a really key point that is important to continue to remind people also when we think about waste management in general, being this overwhelmingly huge thing that is contributing to climate change and contributing to pollution and all of these different things. There’s likely a community composter in your area that you can bring your food scraps to, or you can start backyard composting in your own area, or you can get involved in your community in a very tangible way.

Natasha Duarte:
Take a master composting class.

Jordan Ashby:
Yeah, take a master composting class. Exactly. That really puts the power directly back into the hands of the people in their own communities. The last thing that I wanted to ask you today, thank you again so much, you’ve shared so much wisdom, is if you have any advice that you would give to other advocates that are advocating for food waste recovery requirements in their states? I know that there have already been some copycat laws in other states that are being passed, so what advice would you give?

Natasha Duarte:
Yeah, I think maybe be prepared for things you don’t know. How can you work language into the law that really holds to the goals of clean streams and source separation and the highest and best use issue? Because when Vermont wrote our law, depackaging really wasn’t on our scene, and that really sent ripples through our community. We’ve had to take some time and are still sorting out our approach to dealing with this technology. But I’m sure there’s other, likely AI, technology that… I don’t know, I’m just saying that because that’s all on the news. Who knows what new technology is going to come on the scene. So I think that states or municipalities that are looking to create a new law would be well advised to try to think through putting in some language addressing and acknowledging that we don’t know what’s coming, but these are our highest goals, period.
So technology or new systems that might come online in the future need to meet these certain requirements or be utilized in a way that only supports these overarching goals and be really clear about that. While the language in Vermont’s law seems on some levels, to be clear, it’s also been fairly contested. So I’m sure there’s takeaways from that. So just being really thoughtful about that you’re not writing a law for the way things are today in a static systems management and environment. There’s always going to be change in new things. Some of it really good, right? We’re hoping for solutions to PFAS and microplastics that we’ve never even heard of. That’s great if that comes down. There might be other things that hold more towards diversion for diversion’s sake and really doesn’t highlight some of the other goals that states or communities might have. So I think those are the biggest takeaways is just being thoughtful about what you don’t know that might be coming in the future, and is there language that can be crafted and integrated that provides some buffer for that?

Jordan Ashby:
Thank you for sharing that. I’m sure that will be helpful. This is a really good point, not just in this field, but really for anyone working on any type of policy advocacy work. Well, thank you so much, Natasha, for joining us today. It has been so lovely. I’ve definitely learned a lot, and I hope that anyone tuning in today has also learned a lot.

Natasha Duarte:
Thanks so much, Jordan. It’s been a pleasure.

Jordan Ashby:
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Composting for Community Podcast from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. This episode was produced by Drew Birschbach and the ILSR’s composting team. Our theme music is I Don’t know from the Grapes. Be sure to check out the rest of the ILSR podcast family, including building local power, local energy rules, and community broadband bits at ilsr.org.