Are you interested in bringing benefits of community composting to your area but feel unsure how the model could scale to meet high demand? Are you a community composter that wants to grow your operation in a competitive landscape, but wonders how to do so without compromising your values? Register for this webinar to hear how three successful community composting businesses navigated scaling up their operations, while staying true to the distributed operations and mission-driven focus that set community composting apart. Topics covered will include cooperative structures, partnerships with local farmers and gardens, hub-and-spoke models of growth, community engagement, and more!
This webinar will feature presentations from three community composters followed by a moderated panel discussion and Q&A.
Date: Thursday, May 23rd, 2024
Time: 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. ET
REGISTER HERE
Suggested donation: $20
DONATE HERE
A recording of this webinar will be made available to those who register.
This webinar is one in a series the Institute for Local Self-Reliance offers to support a distributed and diverse composting infrastructure that includes community-sized and on-farm composting.
This webinar is Part 1 of 2 in a Scaling Up Community Composting webinar series the Institute for Local Self-Reliance offers to support a distributed and diverse composting infrastructure that includes community-sized and on-farm composting. To view and listen to our past composting-related webinar recordings, click HERE.
PRESENTER & PANELISTS
  Kristie Blumer – Senior Director of Composting, Compost Crew
Kristie's passion is identifying sustainable solutions to connect people to the environment. Kristie has over 13 years of waste management experience from hazardous waste remediation to food waste recycling. She now leads the composting division at Compost Crew, a mission-driven food scrap recycling and composting business that services more than 20,000 homes, businesses, and municipalities in the Washington, DC metro region. |
 David Paull – Chief Impact Officer, CompostNow
David Paull is co-founder and Chief Impact Officer at CompostNow. CompostNow is an award winning compost solutions provider for organics recycling with expertise in the hauling, logistics, consultation, production, and distribution of compost. Founded in 2011, CompostNows’ mission is to make composting easy. Since 2011, CompostNow has diverted 75 million pounds of food waste from landfills and created 24 million pounds of finished compost for local farms and gardens. David has been highly involved in food waste circularity, food systems, and social entrepreneurship for the past decade. He currently serves as a commissioner on the East Point Local Food System Ecosystem Commission, as a Board Member of the Southface Institute, and is the founding Board Chair of the Georgia Compost Council. With a design degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design, David applies design thinking to advance circular solutions at the intersection of planetary and human health. |
 Michael Robinson – Co-founder, Rust Belt Riders
Michael is a co-founder and worker-owner at Rust Belt Riders+Tilth Soil, an organization dedicated to transforming regional food systems through the creation of soil blends from food waste. RBR+Tilth’s vision is to build a regenerative solidarity economy that improves food security and combats climate change. He also serves on the board of Cleveland Owns, an economic democracy incubator that builds cooperative businesses and leads campaigns for community control of resources. When he’s not working, he likes to read, cook, help on his wife's flower farm, and nap with his cats. Michael is an Echoing Green Climate Fellow and an Environmental Leadership Program Senior Fellow. |
MODERATOR
Clarissa Libertelli – Coordinator, Community Composter Coalition Clarissa coordinates the Community Composter Coalition, a network with over 300 organizational members in 47 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 9 other countries, hosted by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Her work involves convening networking and knowledge-sharing events for community composters, producing resources and infographics to support community composting, and more. |
