Community Composting Gains Momentum

Depending on the day, if you happen to be in the heart of Seattle’s Chinatown International District (CID) you’ll see volunteers toting food scrap-filled buckets they’ve collected from restaurants on to a lush green space a block away. There, this would-be garbage is made into a nutrient-rich compost that’s donated to elderly Asian American gardeners while restaurants get an alternative to municipal curbside organics recycling.

Though a great concept, the city’s food scrap collections wasn’t working for these business owners, says Joycelyn Chui, co-founder of Restaurant 2 Garden, the local compost operation behind the grassroots project.

The government program’s cost and complexity were barriers, as was a quick turnover rate; teaching proper waste sorting was an uphill battle.

Then there is the issue of “out of site out of mind.” Someone had to show these businesses not only how to sort, but what could be done with the scraps they tossed if, instead, they set them aside for collections. 

That’s what community composting is about—keeping the process and product local; educating and inspiring people to get involved; and customizing the operation for those it serves.

Chui was the person to lead the charge in this tight-knit Asian community. She was born and raised in Hong Kong, and through her work with Seattle Public Utilities helps CID restaurant owners navigate waste management programs. She knows the locals and has a good sense of how to engage them.

With community-centric models, composting’s benefits—rich soil, healthy crops, reduced greenhouse gases, and jobs created to make all this happen—stay in the neighborhoods that generate the waste. And they begin to see how that waste fuels the whole process.

These operations are popping up at schools, in gardens, parks, and other public spaces. And they are more than compost sites. They are places people come together for workshops on organics management, tours, and celebrations. The programs are gaining momentum, increasing in capacity and in number.

What’s most powerful is the ability to connect residents to the food system from the end of the cycle with only scraps left, back to the beginning when it feeds the soil to grow more crops, surmises Clarissa Libertelli, coordinator of the Community Composter Coalition, a large network of composters who share knowledge and advice.

“By keeping the whole process local, there are so many benefits the community can see that they wouldn’t if you sent the waste away. It’s empowering,” she says

There is no one-size-fits-all method. Details like system capacity and technologies look different from one operation to the next. But in general, there are more eyes and hands on the process, meaning when it’s done right, contamination is kept at bay, and there’s tight quality control.

Operators tend to be motivated. They have come up and out of these neighborhoods. So, like Chui in Seattle, they are intimately familiar with them and vested in them.

But they face growing pains.

Scaling operations is their top challenge, a 2022 census conducted by Community Composter Coalition found.

Securing permits for expansion and finding land can be complicated. Insurance requirements become stringent. And there is other red tape tied to getting to the next level that centralized, commercial facilities are generally better able to navigate.  

Funding can be hard to come by. Some of these grass roots programs are hard-pressed to compete with large operators that not only handle organics but take traditional municipal solid waste and recycling.

They sometimes have a tough go convincing municipalities they have the reach and capacity to make a meaningful difference.

New York City recently made a move to defund its decades-old community compost program. The $5M cut, which forced most of the eight operations to shutter sparked heated contention. It was further fueled by the city’s decision to invest in smart bins and a universal curbside collection program as these long-standing operations went away.

In July 2024 the city restored funding to revive the program, though one operation, which collected food scraps in all five boroughs has dropped out, unable to sustain itself.

Fifteen-year-old Earth Matter NY who had to lay off staff to hang on, is rehiring now, though has done some juggling.

“We went into our cash reserves for a rainy day to fund three positions to be able to continue processing food scraps from March through June 2024,” says Marisa DeDominicis, co-founder and executive director, Earth Matter.

While she and most of her peer organizations are rebounding, she believes there’s more they could do that’s much needed. The city has done well to expand its own food scrap collections, but the recycling rate still hovers in the single digits.

The educational piece they bring to the table can make a difference, community groups say.

“Our composting work is a small financial investment, but it needs to be secured for a multiyear period, so we can have stability to assist in educating and in increasing diversion,” DeDominicis says.

“There is a spirit of collaboration among local organizations as they are all in the same boat of having to navigate a system not built for them,” Libertelli says.

Sometimes this forces creativity, as when they outgrow their technology but can’t find equipment sized for their next stage. They have built aerated static pile systems in old shipping containers; retrofit dumpsters to become in vessel systems; and created DIY solar-powered screeners that harness sunlight to improve efficiency.

LA Compost has several offerings: a network of farmers’ market food scrap collection locations; community compost hubs; a coaching program informing on how to launch a site; and workshops and technical assistance.

Now the nonprofit is gearing up to launch a mobile field trip called the Magic Soil Bus that will visit schools, engaging students around compost’s contribution to community health.

“By creating a decentralized network of support systems across the most populated county in the country, we mimic the beauty of a mycelium fungi network [threads that form roots that grow to cover expansive acres],” says Michael Martinez, founder and executive director, LA Compost.

The well-known group continues to branch out, for some time now diverting about 2M pounds of organics from landfills a year and keeping almost all of it local.

Bucket Ruckus in Stevens Point, Wisconsin does curbside food scrap collections for residents and businesses.

Like others in this space, the organization’s work includes a strong educational component. Its flagship program is an annual event featuring mini seminars on topics related to natural resources and resource management. It’s paired with a social. So, people come out to learn, eat, drink, and check out a microscope exploration station—there are even draws like games and a photo booth. 

When Bucket Ruckus co-owner Kelly Adlington talks about this new educational/party-time event, you see a light in her eyes.

“My dream is that it will inspire people to make lifestyle changes; be dazzled by natural resources and the ecosystems around us; and make friends who also care about these things.”