Policy Tools for Capacity Building

The Waste to Wealth program seeks to encourage a composting infrastructure that is locally distributed and possesses a diversity of scales, feedstock materials, and end-uses for compost products. For more information, see ILSR’s report on “The State of Composting in the US” for a national snapshot of composting policy and models to replicate.

California – Inter-Agency Cooperation

As of 2018, the state of California reported a 65 percent diversion rate for all materials and more than 140,000 green jobs in its recycling sector. This success is attributable to California's 1989 Integrated Waste Management Act and the state's more recent efforts to increase organics recycling through the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle), a state agency that coordinates the state's multiple waste and recycling management programs.… Read More

California – Local Infrastructure Planning

Seeking to further California's waste diversion rate and thereby preserve landfill capacity for the future, the state enacted Assembly Bill 1826 on September 28, 2014. Also known as the Mandatory Commercial Organics Recycling (MORe) program, the bill requires commercial generators of organic waste to compost or anaerobically digest their food waste, landscape and other green waste, food-soiled paper, and nonhazardous wood waste. The law's staggered dates of enforcement will allow adjustment time to develop greater capacity in California's existing organic waste processing infrastructure.… Read More

California – Tax Exemptions

As of 2018, the state of California reported a 65 percent diversion rate for all materials and more than 140,000 green jobs in its recycling sector.[1] This success is attributable to California's 1989 Integrated Waste Management Act[2] and the state's more recent efforts to increase organics recycling through the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery...

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Brenda Platt

Brenda Platt directs ILSR's Composting for Community project.