More Related Content
Similar to CCGS PRESENTATION.pptx
Similar to CCGS PRESENTATION.pptx (20)
More from CompostingForCommuni
More from CompostingForCommuni (11)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
CCGS PRESENTATION.pptx
- 1. Community Composting for Green Spaces “CCGS”
- 2. Composting for Community Initiative: Brenda Platt, Director Compost Policy Project: Janelle Orsi, Executive Director
- 3. Think about all the opportunities! Small-scale and local Create and use compost as close to the source as possible, decreasing fossil-fuel emissions, material storage times, and infrastructure costs. Diverse methods Achieving zero-waste goals through innovative small-size composting systems on-site, in backyards, at community gardens and farms, schools, public parks, and community centers. Community benefits Organic material used as community assets and programs provide critical education, buy-in, local jobs, food production, and green spaces. Closed-loop systems Resource recovery programs where food scraps stay in the community to make healthy soil and grow more food locally, increasing community wealth and resilience.
- 4. ILSR Hierarchy to Reduce Food Waste and Grow Community 1. Prevention and Reduction 2. Feed Hungry People and Animals 3. Home Composting 4. Small-scale and Decentralized Systems 5. Medium-scale and Locally Based Systems 6. Centralized or Anaerobic Digestion 7. Mixed Waste Mechanically Processed 8. Landfill or Incinerator
- 5. CCGS is funded by a $1.5M grant administered by the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) through the California Climate Investments (CCI), and a fiscally-sponsored project of the People, Food, and Land Foundation (PFL).
- 6. Meet the CCGS Team CACC Leadership Kourtnii Brown, Common Compost Elinor Crescenzi, Integrative Development Initiative Lynn Fang, Soil Scientist Michael Martinez, L.A. Compost CCGS Regional Co-Coordinators Kourtnii Brown, Greater Bay Area and Central California Charlotte Canner, Northern California Elinor Crescenzi, Inland Empire Enjoli Ferrari, Greater Los Angeles Zro, Greater San Diego Gina Vollono, Greater Los Angeles CCGS Project Advisors Louise Bruce, San Jose Conservation Corps Jessica Chiartas, PhD, UC Davis Matthew Cotton, Integrated Waste Management Consulting James McSweeney, Compost Technical Services Deb Neher, PhD, University of Vermont Cary Oshins, US Composting Council Calla Rose Ostrander, The Carbon Project Brenda Platt, Institute for Local Self Reliance Cole B. Smith, UCCE Master Composter Program
- 7. 1) Understand barriers to starting and managing locally based composting programs. 1) Provide resources for new and existing programs. 1) Identify success factors. 1) Provide models for effective and sustainable community composting operations. CCGS Project Goals
- 8. CACC Commitments 1) Prioritize accessibility to historically underserved communities 1) Demonstrate value of decentralized, local composting networks 1) Provide holistic analysis of program impacts and metrics 1) Increase community resilience to climate change and food security
- 9. 6.75 million lbs total organics diverted 1,614 MTC02e reduced (~350 cars) 2,750 cy3 compost produced 59 trees planted (+369,000 MTCO2e) 12.5 FTE jobs created at $23/hr $104/ton program average for diversion $96/ton program average for co-benefits Annual Program Impacts in 2022
- 11. Launching Community Composting Sites in Los Angeles: Diverse Conditions Create Diverse Outputs Gina Vollono
- 12. CCGS: LA Region
- 13. Community Compost Development One size does not fit all!!
- 14. Developing a Community Composting Site: Survey Community Interest & Engagement ● Who will this compost bin serve? Those solely connected to the spaces such as employees and or community gardeners? or individuals outside the community? If so, how many? ● How much interest is there in composting from those you want to engage? ● If you are engaging and developing a community composting location, when will food scraps drop off hours take place? Open hours? Drop off bins? ● Have you connected with the neighbors surrounding the space to ask for their concerns with composting? ● Identify who will have access to the finished compost? How much compost stays onsite vs how much can be given to participating drop off members?
- 15. ● How much space do you have? ● What type of compost system is best for the space? ● How do you anticipate tracking those dropping off at your site? Online registration form? In person sign in sheet? ● Can you identify a reliable mulch source in your area? Create a list of local tree trimmers. ● How can inputs enter your site? ● What type of system will be created to support compost processes onsite? ● Are you interested in tracking food scraps and carbon diverted from landfill? If so, what works best for your site? ● Do you have funds available? And if so, what is the budget allocated for composting efforts? Developing a Community Composting Site: Understanding Site Capacity & Design Flow
- 16. Developing a Community Compost Hub: Urban Park Griffith Park Regional Compost Hub
- 17. Community Compost Hub Impacts: Urban Community Garden ● 432,000 lbs of organics diverted ● Finished compost is distributed to community members and park staff for use in Griffith Park ● Using recycled water for all composting ● Site design includes all compost piles on contour for water catchment, filtration and erosion and runoff control ● Local native planting, in collaboration with local biologists and Gabrielino Band of Mission Indian member ● Hugelkultur for carbon sequestration on site ● Rain garden and swale system for water catchment ● Farmers market materials only, roughly 5,000 lbs per week
- 18. Developing a Community Compost Hub: Urban Community Garden East Hollywood Community Garden Compost Co-Op
- 19. Community Compost Hub Impacts: Urban Community Garden ● 35,000 lbs of organics diverted ● Compost is produced and distributed on an ongoing basis and stays in the garden ● Over 50 fruit trees inside the garden ● Productive vegetable garden and pollinator gardens with food distribution for the community ● Refining techniques to maximize compost quality, like moisture and heat ● Co-op includes garden plot members and 75 additional community members ● Material is dropped off from co-op members, garden members and garden scraps.
- 20. Developing a Community Compost Hub: Urban Core Rebel Garden at Chuco’s Justice Center
- 21. Community Compost Hub Impacts: Urban Core ● 4,600 lbs of organics diverted ● Former juvenile hall center, this is now a continuing education center with a garden ● Garden focuses on producing medicinal and edible plants that can be used to teach about culture, health and wellness ● Many other classes visit this space teaching at-risk youth about gardening and composting ● Hummingbirds, bumblebees, butterflies and other pollinators visit this parking lot garden. ● Organic material comes mostly from staff working at the school.
- 22. Community Compost Impacts: Key Takeaways ● Each site and community requires a unique approach ● Put the community and the site needs first! ● Initial targets will change based on the community needs and resources.
- 23. LA Compost’s Community Composting Toolkit Based on survey questions and experience, we developed this toolkit which is available online. Scan QR Code for access! www.lacompost.org/toolkit
- 24. Community Composting for Green Spaces “CCGS”
- 25. Soil Stewardship Training Soil + Compost Quality Testing
- 26. Soil Stewardship Training Curriculum ● Advisory Board informed + gave critical feedback ● Videos available for public view under Creative Commons license: https://www.youtube.com/@californiaallianceforcommu1692 ● Curriculum covered topics in: ○ Environmental Justice + Waste Reduction ○ Decomposition Ecology + Soil Health ○ Thermophilic Compost Processing + Management Systems ○ Vermicompost ○ Community Engagement + Well-being ○ Ecological Garden/Site Design ○ Compost Processing Capacity + GHG Emissions Reductions ○ Bioplastics, Contaminants, Bioremediation + Compost End Uses ○ Source Separation + Resource Recovery ○ Compost Policy
- 27. Soil Stewardship Training Retreat ● Over 80 Community Compost Site Operators attended! ● Lectures by Lynn Fang, Michael Martinez, Elena Lopez, Elinor Crescenzi, Gina Vollono, Monique Figueiredo, Ellie O’bosky, Kourtnii Brown ● Discussion + Demonstrations ● Compost Pile Building + Troubleshooting ● Site Visits to LA Compost + ECOFARM projects ● Community-building Activities ● Camping on-site at Amy’s Farm in Ontario, CA ● Food provided by local community organizers, all sourced organically from local community farms, prepared using traditional nutrient-dense methods
- 28. Soil Stewardship Training Survey Results ● Overwhelmingly positive response ● Participants loved the teachers and site visits most, followed by activities + demonstrations, topics, and presentations ● For future curriculum topics, participants most strongly asked for: ○ opportunities to workshop challenges ○ get site updates ○ share experiences ○ focus on community and relationship-building processes and techniques
- 29. CCGS Soil + Compost Quality Testing ● Pre-test Post-test Soil Testing ● General Compost Chemistry ● Biological Comparison ● Launching a Pilot Compost Quality Lab at LA Compost and ECOFARM
- 30. Pre-Test Soils: Organic Matter % + Water Holding Capacity
- 31. Inland Empire Community Compost: Organic Matter % + C:N
- 32. Aerobic Fungi : Aerobic Bacteria
- 33. ● Moisture Content ● Water Holding Capacity ● NPK ● F:B + Microbial Biomass ● Microscopy ● Bulk Density ● pH/EC ● Soil Assessment Apps ● Bioassay lynn@lacompost.org Pilot Compost Quality Lab Essentials
- 34. The Role of Data in Community Composting Tess Feigenbaum, Epic Renewal
- 35. Improving Soil Health through Data & Smart-Sensors Sashti Balasundaram, WeRadiate
- 36. SMART SENSORS FOR COMPOST PILES
- 37. Community Compost Data: Takeaways ● 40% (4/10) sites: reached minimum 131*F ● 60% (6/10) sites: reached minimum 125*F ○ Opportunity for high standards of soil amendment end-product ● High # touch points of engagement (onsite, virtual, email, phone) ○ Comprehensive regional coordinators = green workforce ● Theft of smart-sensor units ● Extension of program (and funding) can lead to research opportunities and further compost data analysis ○ Seasonality, Precipitation, Latitude / Longitude, Elevation
- 39. Improve Soil Health for the Agriculture and Compost Sectors through Precision Technology, Data, and Education TECHNOLOGY COMMUNITY & Compost Bike Tours Sashti Balasundaram, Founder, CEO WeRadiateNY@gmail.com @WeRadiateNY
- 40. Integrative Development Initiative CCGS Holistic Impact: Inland Empire Case Study Elinor Crescenzi, Integrative Development Initiative
- 41. ● Worker Self-Directed nonprofit ● Centering: ○ Food, health, social, and environmental justice ○ Community building & empowerment ○ Structural and systems change ○ Nonviolence ● Core values: courage, compassion, creativity ● Four key initiatives: ○ ECOFARM Initiative ○ Food Cycle Collective ○ Pomona Community Farmer Alliance ○ Commons Restoration Initiative ● Core founding organization within the Community Composting for Green Spaces team ● Regional Coordinator for Inland Empire region Integrative Development Initiative
- 42. CCGS Inland Empire at a glance ● 31 Sites ● 23 Paid staff ● $40,240 Infrastructure budget ● $184,000 Labor budget ● 509,437 lbs Food scrap diversion ● 3,720,013 lbs Total organics diversion ● ~3739 lbs Average weekly diversion per site ● ~36 average weeks composting per site ● $120 per ton, for composting alone ~$45 per ton ● 908.30 MTCO2e compost related emissions reductions ○ 197 vehicles removed from the road for 1 year ○ Carbon sequestered by 1090 acres of US forest ○ Carbon sequestered by 14,700+ seedlings planted over 10 years ● 261 Fruit Trees & other perennials planted ● 1000s of volunteer hours ● 49 Community organizations involved ● Regional network established ○ Serving historically underserved geographic regions, in High & Eastern deserts ● Programming support in 3 languages ○ English, Spanish, Chinese
- 43. Community composting hubs inspire joy and lead to transformation of unhealthy and unjust systems
- 44. Beyond Diversion & Climate Impacts ● Environmental Impacts ○ Soil ■ Increased nutrients ■ Increased organic matter ■ Increased soil biodiversity ○ Air ■ Reduced emissions ■ Increased carbon sequestration ● Community & Social Impacts ○ Healthy food access ○ Community engagement ○ Public service ■ Employment ■ Volunteering ○ Safe & beautiful gathering spaces ○ Community education ○ Neighborhood beautification ○ Social support networks & safety nets ○ Psychological well-being ○ Water ■ Increased groundwater infiltration ■ Increased water holding capacity ○ Green space ○ Habitat creation ○ Biodiversity
- 45. Healthy Food Access ● 28/31 (90%) sites are currently growing food at a variety of scales ○ 11 Demonstration scale ○ 4 Neighborhood scale ○ 13 Community scale ● 27/31 (87%) serve at risk or vulnerable populations through their food distributions ● Ultra fresh produce ○ Self-harvest ○ Door to door distribution ○ Community distributions ● Virtually no chemical use on produce
- 46. Community Engagement ● Weekly: ○ Community composting hands on learning ○ Volunteer opportunities ○ Food distribution ○ Food scrap drop offs ○ Local business organics support ● Periodically: ○ Community canvassing ○ Community gatherings, events, and workshops ○ Collaborations between community based orgs ○ Compost distribution ○ Advocacy & Public engagement with government
- 47. Public Service Opportunities ● Employment ○ Part-time ○ Local ○ 18/23 (78%) LI or Very low income workers ○ 17/23 (74%) POC ● Volunteer ○ Weekly opportunities ○ Engagement of people who may have barriers to traditional employment (e.g. people with disabilities, undocumented people, people who do not speak english, elders, youth) ○ Leadership opportunities
- 48. ● 25/31 (81%) are gathering spaces ● 19/31 (61%) have permanent seating areas ● 25/31 (81%) are located in low income & underserved communities ● All have public open hours, most have multiple weekly programming opportunities Safe & Beautiful Gathering Spaces
- 49. Community Education & Knowledge Sharing ● Every site offers formal and informal learning opportunities to the community ● Virtually all educational opportunities offered are free to the public ● 24/31 (77%) currently have regular weekly open-to-the-public guided programming
- 50. Neighborhood Beautification & Green Space Development ● 19/31 (61%) green space development projects in conjunction with CCGS ● 31/31 (100%) are neighborhood green spaces ● 11/31 (35%) received soil donations from Amy’s Farm ● 24/31 (77%) built soil and amended their own land with finished compost during the project period ● 261 trees and other perennial fruit screens were planted at the sites and in the directly surrounding neighborhoods
- 51. Social Well-being ● Culture of Care ○ Relationships ○ Friendships ○ Support networks ● Shared purpose ○ Local stewardship ○ System transformation ● Diversity, Equity, Inclusion ○ Intergenerational engagement ○ Intercultural engagement ○ Inclusion of marginalized people ● Sense of Belonging ○ “Find the others” ○ “Find my people”
- 52. Psychological Well-being ● Time in nature ○ Physical & visual immersion in natural spaces ● Touching soil ○ Serotonin release ● Sense of connectedness ● Sense of being part of something bigger than oneself ● Sense of contribution ● Sense of purpose ● Sunlight exposure ○ Vitamin D vitality ● Healthy eating ○ Especially pickled veggies!
Editor's Notes
- - My name is Kourtnii, and I go by she/her/hers. I would like to start this presentation off with an acknowledgement that the land on which we gather is the traditional and unceded territory of the Tongva nation. I am grateful for my experiences and interactions with this land, and I hope you will join me in blessing it for generations to come. - I am a co-founder of the CA Alliance for Community Composting. - I’m really excited for our panelists to share what the folks out here in CA have been accomplishing to expand this emerging sector through a state pilot program called “Community Composting for Green Spaces” or CCGS. - Today, I’ll give a brief overview of how this sector of community composting has developed, and then dig into how we built and coordinated our program, sometimes making it up as we went along, and our progress to-date working alongside our community partners to carve out a viable space for community-scale operations in this industry in CA.
- Community Composters have received significant support over the past decade from both ILSR and the Sustainable Economies Law Center, who have joint initiatives to educate community composters about all aspects of operations, methodologies, business development, and compost law and policy. Both teams have developed resources that help community composters navigate and shape the “soil web” they envision in their communities, and connect with one another all along the way. Composting for Community Map Compost Webinars, Peer Learning Communities People’s Guide to Compost Law and Policy and CompostLaw.org Curriculums and BMP Guides And of course the Community Composter Coalition Forum as pre-workshop to this conference. When I connected with this group in 2017, there were about 100 members, which has since grown to 258 members in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and 6 international countries. Like Marvin Hayes from the Baltimore Compost Collective says, communities are catching “Compost Fever”, we’re becoming well organized, and we have really great support leading this new frontier.
- Many innovative decentralized and locally-based operations are already making a BIG differences in their communities towards increasing participation in zero waste efforts, improving air quality, and making healthy soil. Small sites can get up and running more quickly, at very little costs, and can be more intimately monitored to control for the quality and content of feedstocks. They directly engage with the public, which has BIG educational benefits to encourage greater participation rates and to improve how well people begin to source-separate in larger municipal programs. Most importantly, a diversified compost sector creates space for experimentation with best practices and different methods, quality testing, data gathering, and sharing lessons learned. This is a HUGE opportunity to help our industry expand and improve! Some cities and states in the U.S. are already helping to promote localized composting by offering financial incentives and resources for small-scale operations, removing barriers in the facility permitting process, and supporting communities to build “craft compost” markets. I’ll talk about these more in a minute in terms of our CCGS program. But too often, home composting, on-site composting, community-scale composting, and on-farm composting are being overlooked as viable solutions supported by regulating agencies.
- I could spout off all the statistics that illustrate the incredible food crisis that our country, and the world faces right now, but we’re all here because we know them and I’m here because I am not going to plane crash your morning. What I’d rather have you focus on is the glaring solution behind those numbers that is becoming just too amazing to ignore. ILSR designed this alternative food waste reduction hierarchy triangle in order to show that the EPA’s general composting category is actually quite complex, and to emphasize there is a highest and best use for organic material processing. This one here highlights locally based composting solutions as a first priority over large-scale regional facilities, and addresses the community benefits when considering what strategies and infrastructure to pursue. But it also demonstrates that both small-scale and large-scale systems can co-exist and be mutually beneficial to respond to all aspects of the food waste crisis. And let’s be honest, if we’re scaling the top of the chart first, then there would be little need for achieving scale at levels 6 or 7 on this chart, and so we’re going to need supporting policy to realize highest and best use principles if the concept of zero waste will have any integrity.
- The CA Alliance for Community Composting has been active since 2017 in educating policymakers to safeguard and empower opportunities for small-size and decentralized compost hubs as part of SB 1383 implementation. In addition to granting facility exemptions for small-scale activities below 100 cubic yards, in 2020, Calrecycle also released a request for assistance to administer a grant program that develops community-based composting operations statewide. It is important to note that this program is the first-ever funding opportunity of its kind at a state-level to help meet landfill diversion targets at the community level, and it also works to support goals at the intersection of social and environmental justice. I hope our program strategy can serve as a model that any of you can duplicate, form your own collaboratives, and lobby your local and state government to fund similar opportunities. But at the time, none of the individual compost groups in CA were big enough to take on the big bucks and submit an application on their own, so CCGS has been conducted as a partnership under the fiscal sponsorship of the People, Food, and Land Foundation. It also started out as a $1.35 million contract, but we received an additional allocation for excellent performance in June 2021. So in the end here’s the boilerplate language for the full $1.54 million we have received from our sponsors, and for whom have provided this industry with an unstoppably power of “YES, in my backyard!”
- The CACC leadership team designed the core components of the CCGS program with support from our project advisors, and worked collaboratively to prepare the winning application to CalRecycle for implementing the program. The CCGS regional coordinators are working with 105 groups throughout the state in vastly different types of communities to steward local community composting work: from urban cities to rural areas and on Tribal Lands. We have organized our team’s program engagement into 6 regions: Sacramento & Northern California The Bay Area Fresno & Central California The Inland Empire The Greater Los Angeles area, and The Greater San Diego area
- CalRecycle’s goal with CCGS is to support basic market development for community-based and small-scale composting projects, and to ensure long term sustainability for such operations so that communities can continue to offer place-based jobs and make healthy soil. Ultimately, this program will help California, and other states that wish to model this type of investment, better quantify the capacity that community-based infrastructure and programs could have for meeting landfill diversion targets. It is also meant to help CalRecycle better identify the most effective and affordable models to scale for community composting operations
- However, we all know that diversion targets are just one part of the picture here. CACC is also committed to providing CalRecycle with a more holistic understanding of the “return on investment” we get from community composting. We’ve designed our programs to specifically address equity and inclusion by prioritizing the selection of projects from historically underserved groups, low-income groups, groups in the start-up stages of their business development, and especially minority groups, such as: Black and Indigenous People of Color Migrants Refugees LGBTQIA+ and trans/non-binary folks Folks with disabilities And folks who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated We’ve been reporting the amount of food grown and distributed to food insecure folks at each site, number of trees and other urban greening work, the amount of community education events and workshops that have been hosted at sites, and total volunteer hours spent on projects in addition to paid labor. Moving in this way, we can co-create an inclusive future where impacts are measured by more than just dollar-per-ton metrics.
- This was our annual program impacts last year, and our AVERAGE program site cost to divert one ton of material. We’re on track to meet our program goals and we have 35% of our regional budgets left to spend. In 2022, CACC spent $685,000 dollars supporting 105 community groups across the state of California collectively diverting 3,375 tons of organics through the 120 small compost hubs that launched or expanded as part of CCGS. Our average operations cost last year was only $200 per ton of organic material diverted, which is far below the industry average for commercial composting corporations at $373 per ton. We estimate that CCGS project sites collectively reduced emissions by 583 MTCO2e from diversion alone, with another 1,031 MTCO2e in reductions achieved by applying the 2,750 cubic yards of compost produced last year on local gardens and farms, 369,000 MTCO2e by planting 59 trees, and an unknown amount of greenhouse gas emission reductions as a result of less vehicles miles traveled for conducting these operations. By 2025, California will need to divert approximately 26.8 million tons of organic material annually. To accommodate this, CalRecycle has estimated the state will need to spend $17.4 billion dollars establishing new organic collection, processing, and recycling infrastructure, including building about 85 new large-scale compost facilities to do so (and these are far from completion)…” If we replicate this program with just 1% of the projected state costs for these landfill diversion investments (which is $174 million dollars), small scale recovery solutions could add up to capturing about 5% of all material generated in the state annually, and for half the cost of commercial enterprises to do the same thing. That’s something to talk to policymakers about! And similarly at the local level, by investing just $1 million of a local county’s budget TODAY to support launching a decentralized network of 100 community-based projects in open green spaces, this is the capacity we estimate can be accomplished in under 2 years and be sustained for many more.
- Without further ado, I’d like to introduce our first speaker, Gina Vollono. Gina Vollono was born and raised in Los Angeles and has worked in the urban agriculture sector for over a decade. Gina is committed to environmental education and facilitating meaningful ways to engage with urban spaces and provide land stewardship. Gina loves to compost and watch its transformation from beginning to end, as it reflects our own potential for change and renewal, individually and as a community. I’d also like to add that Gina is also an instagram star! Gina will be discussing Innovative/effective models for for LA Compost, and the env Impacts of CCGS in our most saturated region.
- True cost is higher, at least double But composting dedicated hours were only 38%