The USCC exists because of, and in support of, our membership. From our dedicated Board of Directors, leading by example, to our volunteer committee members, helping guide the council, to all our members that are dedicated to our mission that keeps our Council as an engaging experience. The US Composting Council is truly humbled by the continued efforts of its members. This year has proven to be challenging on a number of fronts; each challenge is bearable due to our member’s commitment to the industry. I have to thank our staff for reacting quickly to the COVID-19 challenge by providing our members with a great webinar series and Victory Garden marketing plan that helped in reducing fears and selling more compost.

In the late summer, the USCC Board of Directors voted to host a virtual conference in lieu of our in-person conference. Even though nothing can fully replace our typical in-person conference, we are excited to bring you our very first virtual conference – Virtual COMPOST2021. Immediately after announcing the move to our Virtual COMPOST2021, the USCC received interest in attendance, exhibition, and sponsorship. Through our long-standing partnership with Green Fern Events, we have been able to pivot to virtual options that allow for meaningful engagement while keeping our attendees, speakers, exhibitors, and staff safe.

Each of the USCC’s strategic goals is supported by volunteers on our committees. With 16 committees, represented by 116 individuals, the work of advocating, educating, certifying, strategizing, leading and developing is taken on by a diverse group of passionate individuals. Without such active committee members, the US Composting Council would not be what it is today. Members like McGill Compost, whose staff participates on multiple committees, experienced significant issues with feedstock contamination this year. McGill participated in information sharing about herbicide in its compost, submitted comments to the USEPA through our "Get the PH out of our Compost,” and sponsored a webinar to educate the community about the science behind herbicide persistence. This dedication, to the betterment of our industry, is one humbling example of member engagement in a sea of honest, hard-working organizations that make up the US Composting Council.

The support that has been given so generously to the USCC has enabled our staff to adapt to the needs of the industry. We have restructured staff roles to help us better achieve the goals outlined in our Strategic Plan. With a growing need for regional advocacy, the USCC has transitioned Linda Norris-Walt from her position in Marketing and Communications into a new role in Advocacy & Chapter Relations development. Linda has been hard at work bringing on new state chapters and developing a new state chapter structure as well as working with membership to better define our role in advocating for the industry and your needs. We are in the process of developing a new Seal of Testing (STA) Program database that will help streamline renewals and reporting of STA data. Additionally, the USCC is excited to announce new staff members joining the council on December 1. See below for more details.

We have a lot to be thankful for and it is with a gracious heart that I want to say thank you to each and every one of our members, as you bring a unique and valuable perspective to the table. It is only through your membership and participation that we can continue to advocate for the compost industry.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.

– Frank Franciosi

Megan Hester came to the USCC in the Fall of 2018 as an intern. Immediately, we recognized her talent and appreciated her attitude. After a short interlude at CompostNOW, Megan joined the staff full time as an administration assistant. She quickly made herself invaluable as a dependable employee. Her involvement in COMPOST2020 helped break records for attendance and attendee experience. Megan became involved in the administration of the Seal of Testing assurance program and, along with Hilary Nichols, streamlined this program making processes more clear and easy to follow for participants. With the development of an integrated STA database in the works, Megan has co-lead the planning for this connected system.

In mid-December Megan will be leaving her position at the USCC to return to school to become a landscape architect. Though we are sad to see her go, we are thrilled to have been able to share and grow with her over the last two years.  Megan will be working to smoothly transition her responsibilities to her fellow Young Professional, contact Gowri Sundaram who will be joining the team on December 1, 2020.

Thank you Megan for your hard work and friendship over the past two years.

– Frank Franciosi

The USCC would like to welcome Gowri Sundaram. Gowri will be picking up where Megan Hester is leaving off in December. With a background in laboratory testing for the STA program, a member of the Young Professionals group, and a long-time USCC member Gowri will be able to hit the ground running.

Gowri Somasundaram has a master’s degree in biotechnology with expertise in compost microbiology. She is the current Resiliency Coordinator in Fort Wayne for Earth Charter Indiana. She is a climate change advocate, a strong believer of soil being the carbon sequestration agent. She did  quality and safety testing on compost samples of STA participants and other compost producers before joining the US Compost Council.

She started with USCC as a Young Professional, served on different committees, and currently chairs the Mentoring Committee. Gowri had taught a Compost Operator Training Course COTC session on the quality of the finished product. In her spare time, she does outreach to schools and community about composting. She has her own kitchen scrap backyard composter. She is volunteer coordinator for Mayor Youth Engagement Council. She also volunteers with Food Rescue US, diverting food waste going to landfill. In addition, she is a Divisional Head Judge for First LEGO League Robotics.

This year's Composting Awards nomination process closes on November 25, 2020!

Nominate a deserving composter/compost program today! Note that nominations must come from USCC members. Information and nomination forms are available on the USCC Awards webpage.

The awards will be presented at Virtual COMPOST2021, the annual conference and trade show to be held January 26-27, 2021.

If you want to see past award winners, click here.

Since our annual conference is going virtual this year, it gives us an opportunity to show compost facility tours from far away places that we might not otherwise tour. Typically, we are restricted to locations that are warm-ish in the US in January, so we are looking at you Northern Hemisphere. Also, we can expand our borders with this platform - so we are looking add locations globally (South/Central America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica?!). Have you visited, own, or run a super cool facility? Please nominate them for a virtual tours. We are looking for a good mix of small vs. big, different technologies, crazy feedstocks etc. Diversity and Inclusion does not need to be limited to HR, but to compost facilities too!

The USCC’s Young Professionals Group is excited to announce that, in cooperation with the Compost Research and Education Foundation, they are continuing to host the Emerging Composter Competition this year at Virtual COMPOST2021! This competition has traditionally involved a poster presentation at our compost conference and highlights new business or research projects that are involved with the composting industry or organics recycling. This year competitors will have short video presentations available on our Virtual COMPOST2021 platform. All conference attendees will be able to view the presentations and vote on their favorite projects. Our top three winners of the competition will receive cash prizes.

We would like to thank our generous sponsors of the competition this year! Check them out at their websites here: BioBag Americas, McGill Environmental Systems, and beyond GREEN, LLC dba bioDOGradable Bags. We welcome more sponsors. If you are interested in sponsoring this competition, please reach out to Megan Hester at mhester@compostingcouncil.org.

For those of you interested in competing, our Young Professionals Group has been hard at work making plans for the competition. Keep your eye out for the applications, which will be opening up soon and will be available on our website. Applicants can be college students to any for-profit or not-for-profit business owners who have been in existence 3 years or less. They should have an annual sales revenue of $100,000 or less and should be looking for ways to gain feedback and momentum in pursuing their project, program, or business concept. The Virtual COMPOST2021 Conference is a great place to share ideas and brainstorm with other folks in the industry. We are excited to see all the great projects, businesses, and ideas that are presented this year. Our virtual conference platform will allow for new, creative ways of presenting ideas – we look forward to seeing the new ways competitors take advantage of this!

Those of you who might not be "emerging” and have been in the industry a bit too long to compete, we also need you! Every attendee at the conference gets a chance to vote and be a judge of the competition this year. Be sure to register for Virtual COMPOST2021 to take part in the voting! Join us to make a vote for who receives the cash prizes and see the innovative new ideas in the competition. This competition continues to encourage new growth, research, and ideas in the composting industry!

The USCC Board thanks you for voting in favor of our proposed bylaws amendments, offered mainly to bring wording in sync with DC Corporation code.

• Article IV
  • Section 20: Removal of directors. Revising requirement for a majority of members and striking 2/3 supermajority. (This policy outlines specific steps to be taken for Board Member renewal; DC code requires a majority of members (not specific 2/3) so it will meet DC code.
• Article VIII
  • Section 2: Special Meetings Requiring approval of 25% (instead of 50%) of members to call special meetings (Aligning percentage with DC code)
  • Section 4: Quorum and Voting. Disallowing membership voting by proxy.
• Article IX
  • Section 4: Votes per Member. Disallowing voting by proxy.

(Member voting by proxy can be allowed under the amended DC code, but it is not USCC’s preference to have proxy voting. Proxy votes have never been allowed; the board has always had the opinion that you need to be present to vote on motions.)

We offered a $25 USCC gift card to a randomly drawn name of a member who voted on the bylaws, and the winner is Annette Folgueras of Hidden Brook Stables in Maryland.

Finding land for compost facilities is not easy – and finding properly zoned land for compost facilities is even tougher.

USCC’s Legislative & Environmental Affairs Committee, staff and Target Organics surveys have identified lack of zoning for compost facilities as one of the BIGGEST impediments to starting a compost facility.

The LEAC’s Model Zoning Task Force, led by Marcus Zbinden, a member and award-winning regulator from Carver County, MN, has spent the past year focusing on zoning ordinances from around the country in the areas of commercial, on-farm and community-scale composting and pulled the best and most common issues and definitions from all of them for our draft template. "Our aim was to look forward to where our industry is headed, and to provide a template that cities and counties can modify within their own local community’s economic and political climate,” said Zbinden. Other Task Force members who have worked on the template over the past year have been Brian Freeman, Robinson & Cole, Jorge Montezuma, Atlas Organics, Angel Arroyo-Rodriguez, Ohio EPA, Eileen Banyra, Community Compost Company, Neil Edgar, Edgar & Associates.

USCC is reaching out to members and a number of stakeholders through November 30, and asks you to use the Comment Document to "put yourself in the shoes” of a compost facility operator who wants to expand or start a new facility to see if the model zoning template covers the issues that arise.

Thank you for your help with this important initiative!

• Model Zoning Template
• Comment Document

USCC provided educational expertise to several regional events and urged US EPA to change its position to evaluate downstream impacts of persistent herbicides during the past month, keeping the focus on the effects of the pyridine class of herbicides (such as picloram, clopyralid and aminopyralid) since a number of incidents last spring.

The US EPA communication, which also indicated USCC’s eagerness to serve on a USEPA/USDA workgroup on persistent herbicides, also pointed out Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS)’s position that downstream impacts of persistent herbicides does not fall under the provisions of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). "As documented in the comments received from home gardeners … and in the cases reported through our confidential reporting form, these herbicides are clearly having negative economic and social impacts,” USCC’s letter stated, which can be found here.

Associate Director Cary Oshins presented on the impacts of persistent herbicides on compost and the compost industry to the Texas Compost Summit in October, and to the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association in November. In addition, he and Dr. Fred Michel of Ohio State University, a national expert on persistent herbicides, held a USCC webinar on the topic on October 21. That webinar, free to members, can be found here, along with other USCC webinars.

Lauren Clarke is a native Texan on a mission to make you rethink and reuse your urban environment. She is the Founder and CEO of Turn (www.turncompost.com), a sustainability company based in Dallas/Ft. Worth that benefits businesses and households while reducing their environmental impact. Their subscription-based model not only helps the environment; it rewards those who join them.

Why did I want to get certified? I'm passionate about creating change in my community for organics recycling. I believe that a thorough understanding of the why and how is necessary for any leader to possess when trying to make a difference. The USCC certification is our nation's leader for composting advocacy, education and certification. I'm proud that Turn is a member of and certified by this great organization.

Gina Talt, Food Systems Project Specialist at Princeton University, talks about event composting and avoiding contamination from the college campus perspective;

David Prew, owner of Plantscape Solutions in Austin, TX, talks about top dressing of compost on lawns, and how to get your service out to online customers.

The Iowa Waste Reduction Center has recently begun developing The Comprehensive Regional Food Waste Diversion Project with help from a Rural Development, USDA Grant. This initiative will decrease the amount of food waste that is discarded in landfills by providing direct, on-site assistance and training for food waste stakeholders in four regions of the Midwest. These regions include Iowa and surrounding states.

The project will provide training guides, fact sheets, window clings, and certificates of participation. Training materials will inform stakeholders on the federal and participating states’ requirements when feeding animals food scraps, tax incentives available to donors of food, and guidance to receive these incentives. Training materials will also cover food waste composting best management practices, and how to build partnerships to increase opportunities that prevent and reduce food waste.

After two meetings are hosted within each of the four regions, on-site training will become available, allowing stakeholders to take advantage of learning the different ways to divert food waste through partnership building on a regional scale.

Each region will also receive their own customized plan addressing the best ways to reduce food waste, the costs and benefits of the current strategies compared to proposed ones, and contact information for the stakeholders that attended the training.

Additionally, information regarding how to participate in this project, plus additional food waste reduction strategies will be readily available on the IWRC’s website in an easy to use downloadable format for all to take advantage of.

From now on we’ll be known as One Step Closer (OSC). We decided to simplify the organization name and drop the two/squared, but we won’t completely lose sight of it – you’ll see it used in new creative ways. In updating our messaging, we wanted to accurately capture all that we do as an organization yet make it succinct and easy to articulate. As we updated the website, we wanted to both create a hub for current members and clarify for potential members or community partners who we are, what we do and how they can get involved.

One of the things we heard from you during the process, was that you wanted a clearer way to articulate your membership in OSC, so we created a simple messaging point for you to use: "As an OSC member, we are part of a collective of changemakers elevating ourselves, our organizations and the natural products industry to prioritize regenerative businesses built on the quadruple bottom line of people, purpose, planet and prosperity.”

Evergro Organic Recycling, Inc.

Heartland F/S, Inc.

Natural Designs Landscaping

San Pasqual Valley Soils

Organizations

Tyler Wright, Allwood Recyclers Inc

William Torgeson, Log Gone It llc

Gwenn Nolan, Mother Compost

Stephanie Gongora, NC State University

Nathan Rutz, Rust Belt Riders

Michele Riggs, Spectra Laboratories, LLC

Michael Bergmann, Spectra Laboratories, LLC

Tom Tharp, St. Louis Composting Inc

Joanna Ashford, University of Kentucky

Stacy Borden, University of Kentucky

Individual

Hannah Johnson

Grace Jean Anderson

Trent McDaniel

Arya Hawkins

Now that the CCREF paper on soluble salts in compost has gone through the peer-review process, the Foundation has scheduled a webinar to share the results. The researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh will present their findings with Ginny Black, CCREF Board of Trustee Chair, sharing why this project was funded by the Foundation and why going through the peer-review process was done. The webinar, Soluble Salts: Are they Good or Bad? is scheduled for December 9 at 2 p.m. (ET).

Register today!

As most nonprofits know, 2020 has not been an easy year for fundraising. To help raise funds to keep all of CCREF’s programs and projects continuing and adding more into 2021, the Foundation is going to hold an online silent auction leading up to and during the virtual COMPOST2021. We’ve already had some amazing items donated to the auction, thank you to everyone who donated something to date, but we could use a few more donations. If your company or if you have something that you think would make a great silent auction item, let Beth Simone know at bethsimone@compostfoundation.org.