ILSR’s Brenda Platt presented at a free webinar, “Community Composting: Lessons from New York City & Beyond,” on September 16, 2014.
Community composting presents a scalable food diversion option that is applicable in virtually any community, whether urban, suburban, or rural. Community compost programs can be established at community (neighborhood, urban, or tribal) gardens, farms, schools, or other locations. They can be operated by not-for-profit organizations, governments, private sector, schools, housing associations, cooperatives, or through other arrangements.
Operations can serve as demonstration or training sites and/or serve as an effective solution for initiating food scrap processing. Food scrap drop-off collection can take place at community compost sites, farmers markets, transit stations, or other locations. An essential role that community composting can play in the evolution of food scrap diversion is to educate and involve residents in learning about food scrap diversion, the benefits of composting, the uses for compost products, and how the resulting compost products can benefit the community.
New York City’s Compost Project is a community-scale composting network that works to increase capacity and participation in composting in NYC. The city has developed partnerships to provide collection and processing of residential food scraps through its community composting network, along with pilot food scrap collections at multi- family units and schools. In NYC, an estimated 200,000 people participate in the community food scrap collection.
Presenters and Topics
Community Composting—a Model for any Community – Brenda Platt, Co-Director, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Director, Composting Makes $en$e Project, & lead author of the new report Growing Local Fertility: Guide to Community Composting
Growing Organics Collections in NYC: The Evolution of the GrowNYC Food Scrap Collection Program & More – David Hurd, Director, Office of Recycling Outreach & Education, GrowNYC
Community Composting in Action – Christine Datz-Romero, Executive Director, Lower East Side Ecology Center
Sponsored by the Northeast Recycling Council • Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) • New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
