Advocacy Spotlight: Compost Crusader

Melissa Tashijan and Grace Wagner

Compost Crusader, a member and past USCC Award winner from St. Francis, WI, was invited to the State Capitol in Madison this month to speak with two legislators and a senator whose districts have landfills scheduled to be capped in the next five years.

Compost Crusader is a growing organics hauler that is diverting more than 2.5 million pounds per year in southeastern Wisconsin with 1,000 residents and 200 commercial customers. They have grown residential and commercial organics diversion around southeastern Wisconsin for the last five years. There is only one compost manufacturer processing food scraps in the area, and this year, they reached processing capacity due to lack of a market for the finished compost.

The Compost Crusader team, led by Melissa Tashjian and operations specialist Grace Wagner, presented the legislators with whom they met with legislation recently passed in Illinois that requires DOT projects or other state-funded infrastructure projects to utilize locally created compost, as well as letters of support from residents and local businesses and a petition of 1,500 signatures asking for similar legislation for compost use in Wisconsin.

While there are still questions to answer (such as how the cost of Wisconsin compost would affect the budgets that are associated with these projects), the concept was met with enthusiasm, and Compost Crusader representatives were given several referrals to committee heads that may be interested in introducing a bill.

“We hope that this legislation will help incentivize more food scraps compost sites to emerge if they have more of a built-in outlet for finished product,” said Melissa. She said her team has noticed that these DOT projects will be well suited for compost that is created from compostable products that are often generated from large venues and outdoor festivals.

“We look forward to the future as we deal with a bottleneck situation as a way to further our reach and share our success within this emerging eco-industry in Wisconsin," said Melissa. "Viva la compost!”