CCLC Accomplishes Industry Study, Zoning, and Launch of National Outreach Campaign

USCC has created a new infographic to celebrate the first three years of achievements catalyzed by the support of the Corporate Compost Leadership Council.

The CCLC’s members—Club Coffee, The Clorox Co., Clif Bar, Chick-fil-A, Dart, Delaware North, EcoProducts, Georgia Pacific, Mars Inc., Natureworks, Printpack, Rubicon, and Sabert—have supported key projects accomplished by the USCC to the tune of more than $200,000. Those projects include the following...

The Target Organics Hub – This website is a collection of resources aimed at helping communities ramp up food scrap recycling from existing yard waste programs, or with no compost availability at all. It was designed to help municipalities in ‘compost desert’ regions (states with few compost facilities) to begin the transition to food scrap composting. Chick-fil-A and The Clorox Company provided special funding to make this project happen.

Model Zoning Template and Model Rule 2.0 – One of the biggest obstacles we have heard from both communities and member compost businesses is the difficulty of navigating government requirements.  This led to a group that developed model plug-and-play Model Zoning text amendment language for counties and cities, because so few communities have zoning in place for compost facilities. The Model Rule, which was first developed by the USCC in 2012 to serve as a model set of state compost regulations, went through a six month government regulator vetting process for updates to address community composting and new feedstocks.

Industry Economic Study – This in-depth project will be published in the coming quarter and was completed by the Environmental Research and Education Foundation, which spent a year surveying compost facilities about feedstocks, equipment, payroll, employee numbers and other data that will help us to better target efforts to build infrastructure.  Mars underwrote a large portion of the project.

National Awareness and Outreach Efforts – For a decade, members have been calling for a national effort to inform American consumers about composting, and this will be accomplished with underwriting by CCLC, along with help from Chick-fil-A, Clif Bar, and Rubicon Global. CCLC members have also volunteered time as an advisory team, and an RFP from their work is about to be awarded this spring to a national advertising firm to begin to outline this campaign. 

Compostable Labeling Template – Support from CCLC enabled USCC to devote more staff resources to the development of a template bill for compostable labeling, an issue that continues to bedevil both compost manufacturers and certified compostable product suppliers. The template bill will be released for the next legislative season, thanks to hard work by USCC, compost representatives, the Biodegradable Products Institute, compostable industry representatives and the Compost Manufacturing Alliance.

USCC's new projects can be found at https://www.compostingcouncil.org/page/CorporateCompostLeadershipCouncil. We are looking for new and continued support for these projects. If you know someone who is interested in joining the group, which meets quarterly in a virtual meeting and at the USCC conference each year, please contact Linda Norris-Waldt.