Posts Tagged ‘Compost Standards & Regulations’

The Waste to Wealth program seeks to encourage a composting infrastructure that is locally distributed and possesses a diversity of scales, feedstock materials, and end-uses for compost products. For more information, see ILSR’s report on “The State of Composting in the US” for a national snapshot of composting policy and models to replicate. State of Composting in the…

Performance-based compost regulations describe standards to be met without imposing restrictions on the exact way to meet those standards. Several states in the Pacific Northwest (such as Washington and Oregon), as well as Ohio in the Midwest have implemented performance-based standards, thereby acknowledging that no one regulatory model is best for every facility. These rules…

Farmers have a vital role to play in producing and utilizing compost to restore depleted soils. Permit exemptions authorize compost operations on farms and smaller-scale facilities, such as community gardens, thus avoiding superfluous permitting requirements intended for larger, full-scale compost facilities. Because there are often significantly less risks or hazards associated with on-farm and small-scale composters,…

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s data on municipal solid waste generation and management, an estimated 52.4 percent of yard trimmings were “grasscycled” or composted in 2018, while only 6.1 percent of food scraps were composted. Policies that ban food scraps from landfills can have a tremendous and immediate effect on diverting organics from the…

Ban on Yard Trimmings in Landfills In addition to implementing yard waste reduction strategies, such as grasscycling, some jurisdictions have banned yard trimmings from landfills. Where such bans exist, public waste management authorities often provide residents the option of curbside collection if the yard debris is “source-separated” from other waste or public drop-off locations. Landfill bans,…