It’s very aspirational and Maryland is on it’s way to meeting those goals, but there’s really a long way to go, particularly with food scraps.

This is Chris Mitchell. I’m back in the host chair. I usually do our broadband type work at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and I’m running the Building Local Power podcast again this week. We’re talking about composting in Maryland and how it’s building local power.

And Brenda, as we start, let me just ask you to just tell people, what award did you win?

It’s always an honor to be recognized by your colleagues and peers.

It’s really a planning construct, it’s a goal. There’s [inaudible 00:03:20] goals along the way, and composting and food waste and yard waste, recycling, is really a very strong part of any community’s zero waste plan or goal. I would just tell you that the leaders in zero waste planning and meeting goals is the business community. There’s a zero waste business alliance, and there’s dozens of businesses that have embraced zero waste planning and are saving money in their bottom line.

The international definition of zero waste is 90% or better, so it’s not really zero in terms of the consensus definition, but there are a number of communities from Austin, Texas to San Francisco to small communities in between that have embraced zero waste planning, and it’s been really a pleasure to be working on a sector and particularly on composting, you know, an issue that addresses so many of the pressing issues of the day.

Not just trash reduction, but creating jobs, meeting client protection goals, composting in particular, because composting is a process that manufacturers [inaudible 00:04:33] product. It’s a soil amendment. It ends up back in soil. And guess what? Once in soil, it sequesters carbon.

There’s so many benefits to moving towards zero waste planning and having composting be part of the strategy towards that.

Now when it comes to composting, it’s true. It’s not just about … only about using compost in your gardens to grow flowers or plants. One of the biggest growing markets for compost in the country is in what we call “green infrastructure.” And those are things like rooftop bioswales, rain gardens, green roofs. All of those green infrastructures that are designed to handle storm water run-offs from parking lots or hard surface areas.

The old way used to be to build like concrete canals or collect it, and when you have green infrastructure, which mimics the natural environment, it acts more like a sieve, if you will, so it filters the storm water. It holds the storm water. It slows it down. You’ve got native species that are growing in it that can handle the water.

Compost in particular, which is really organic matter, has something called humus in it, which is like a glue-like substance that holds, not only the compost together, but the soil particles together. When you had compost organic matter to a rain garden or even your turf grass, your lawns, you’re helping your lawns and those other landscaped areas actually like absorb the water.

Studies show that you need 10% less water when you have soil amended with compost, so it can be tremendous savings on water, nutrients, slowing storm water, sequestering carbon. We are now been doing a lot of work on showing that not only can you save money on communities by doing river-smart landscapes …

In Montgomery County, Maryland, which is the largest population in Maryland, they have a program called the RainScapes program. You can actually get a rebate, up to $750, if you put in a conversation landscape or a rain garden that’s using compost. And if you’re a private business or an institution like a church and office building, your rebate could be $10,000.

There are communities that are building incentives to try and encourage people to add compost to your soils.

It seems like your work is trying to figure how to make sure that as this composting industry develops, that we keep the benefits local to the communities.

But we’re seeing that often those materials are going to a far away facility, so the finished compost isn’t making its way back to the community, to households that have set their food scraps at the curb. And one of the things that we’ve been promoting is that communities could be supporting small scale, decentralized, or distributed infrastructure.

There’s local farmers that could be supported. In addition to rural farms, there’s urban farms, there’s community gardens, there’s composting at schools. And this is the intersection with the Neighborhood Soil Rebuilders Community Composting Training Program we’ve launched is that small-scale sites will only be successful if they have trained operators.

It’s not rocket science, but there is some science, and things you need to know in order to produce high quality compost in order to avoid the pitfalls of unwanted critters running around at your site, and there are best management practices around that.

You want to make sure that you’re reaching high temperatures that can deal with any pathogens that might be in there. We are dealing with rotting food waste, and actually what we teach is you want to be using fresh beet stalks before it actually gets to that rotting phase.

Through the training program, we’re producing kind of a new generation of community leaders who understand the benefits of composting, how to do it, that are leading to small scale decentralized sites being successful. And we’ve launched the program in the DC area already. I mean we have a number of community compost sites not only at urban farms and community gardens, we’ve got some at schools.

It’s been replicated in Atlanta. They have one of their projects that started up from one of the trainees is at a church, in addition to schools and inner city community farms and gardens. It’s helping make these sites very successful.

In this particular state, that was critical. But then it really led to the state agencies, not only the Maryland Department of Environment, but also the Maryland Department of Agriculture, with the other stakeholders, collectors, composters, environmental groups, groups like ours, coming together and identifying that we needed to update the permitting regs.

Without a clear regulatory path in Maryland, we weren’t going to see investors or the private sector build facilities because it was such a gray area. That actually was a process that took three years, and we worked hard to make sure that there were policies that supported on-farm composting, medium scale. We worked hard to make sure there were clear exemptions for small scale sites. We had then followed up with that as we were just talking about with programs to help ensure that those small-scale sites that are exempt are still well-operated.

That bill, bill 171, really calls for the Maryland Department of Environment to have a work group with other stakeholders to look at how it can expand the infrastructure for food waste and yard waste recovery. And it calls for very specific things in the bill, so they have to look at things like identifying sites.

How do we create a grant and loan program to encourage infrastructure?

One of them like [inaudible 00:15:44] co-operative out of Boston is owned by predominantly Latino and African-American workers who were either underemployed or unemployed who saw that this was a growing sector of Massachusetts with the state [inaudible 00:16:02] it was going to be moved more food waste recovery. And they said, “You know what? We’re gonna get a piece of this pie.”

And so they are growing, and many of them are doing it on a community scale where those community assets, food waste and yard trimmings. The benefits, the workforce scales are all kept within the local community, and to support not only the local economy, but the public health and other benefits of those communities.

And it’s just really exciting to see this small scale kind of community composting sector grow and be recognized within the the larger composting industry.

So please Google that and we’d love your feedback on whether we’re on the right track here like rescuing edible food and then promoting home composting and small-scale decentralized composting. And a companion piece to that, I’ll just point out, is a report Growing Local Fertility: A Guide to Community Composting, and that’s also available on our website.

There’s links to other resources as well, so check them out.

Let me just thank you Brenda for coming on Building Local Power and sharing with us some of your insights about composting, where it’s been, where it’s going.

Christopher’s director of the institute’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative. For episode number 11 of the Building Local Power podcast, Brenda and Christopher were discussing composting programs, especially in Maryland, and how they can help build local power. Check out the resources Brenda recommended at ILSR.org and be sure to investigate more composting resources through our Waste to Wealth library.

Thanks.