The California Alliance for Community Composting (Alliance)is helping community groups develop or expand 50 community composting sites in disadvantaged and low-income communities across California using funds from the Community Composting for Green Spaces Grant program. Altogether, these sites are expected to prevent nearly 11,000 tons of organic waste from going to landfills by creating compost, which prevents the release of greenhouse gases during its decomposition. The Alliance’s work will also provide communities with additional benefits, including free compost, job training, and more.
The Community Composting for Green Spaces Grant Program was created in 2019 to help increase the number of small-scale composting programs operating across the state. To achieve this, the California Department of Resources, Recycling, and Recovery awarded more than $1.5 million to the nonprofit organization People, Food, and Land Foundation to support the Alliance, a fiscally sponsored project of the organization. Alliance staff work with each selected community group to help them assess their needs and use a curriculum tailored to each community to provide training and technical assistance.
“Community composters directly engage local people in building climate resilience and serve an integral role in supporting the broader composting industry and sustainable food movements,” says Kourtnii Brown, president of the Alliance. “We create local green jobs, improve local soil health for local food production, and supplement local capacity to meet zero waste goals. And we create lasting community connections all along the way.”
One community group benefitting from the program is SistersWe, a nonprofit organization that supports a network of urban farms and community gardens in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. As a result of direct assistance and critical infrastructure they have received from the Alliance, the group has begun to accept community food scraps, provide composting training, and distribute compost to their community.
In June of 2021, the Alliance also hosted a five-day Soil Stewardship Training in Pomona, which included speakers, presentations, and hands-on demonstrations. In a post-event survey, participants shared that this event made them confident in their ability to implement composting practices in their communities.