December 5th is World Soil Day, a good day to celebrate the power of COMPOST to enhance soil fertility, structure, water-holding capacity, and carbon sequestration. Healthy soils contain 5% organic matter and compost is the best way to add organic matter to depleted soils.… Read More
ILSR is convening the 6th National Cultivating Community Composting Forum in NYC next May. These events will bring together community composters (and those who love them) to network, share best practices, and build support for community-scale composting systems and enterprises. … Read More
In 2017, ILSR launched the Baltimore Compost Collective, a food scrap collection and composting service that is employing local youth in Curtis Bay. Read more about the project here. This year we helped organize a community bin-build of a second composting system in order to expand the site’s capacity to compost food scraps. Check out our 1.5 minute time-lapse video of the bin-build!… Read More
On November 14th, ILSR and the Sustainable Economies Law Center hosted a webinar, Entity Structure for Community Composters: Co-ops, Nonprofits, For-profits, Oh My! View the recording here! Cartoonist/attorney Janelle Orsi explained considerations related to cooperative, nonprofit, for-profit, and hybrid models, with the help of cake … Read More
Baltimore City’s Office of Sustainability recently released its Food Waste Recovery Strategy, written in partnership with ILSR.… Read More
The Compost Collective is an entrepreneurship program where youth are trained in workforce skills, food access programming and community-scale composting. They are receiving guided, hands-on experience managing a small-scale composting operation and its expansion, and using the compost they create to grow fresh produce for the community at Filbert Street Garden.… Read More
The Lindsey Meyer Teen Institute (LMTI) in Secaucus, New Jersey, has a team of youth this summer developing and implementing an action plan to compost food waste at a local high school. To help the team with ideas and move forward with planning their project, ILSR’s lead Neighborhood Soil Rebuilders compost trainers, Brenda Platt and Linda Bilsens Brolis, provided hands-on training July 10th. … Read More
Community composters address “What Is Community Composting?” in this 2-minute video.… Read More
As part of our Community Compost Law & Policy Project, ILSR hosted a webinar with The Sustainable Economies Law Center to provide community composters with an opportunity to share, discuss, and strategize around legal and policy issues confronting community composting. The webinar provided a short overview of the legal and policy trends we see impacting each stage of the composting process, including 1) organic waste generation, 2) hauling, 3) composting, and 4) distribution of compost. These issues include zoning, franchise agreements, insurance, permitting, and more.… Read More
