CURRENT EFFORTS TO BUILD A CULTURE OF COMPOSTING It was important to document all the good work being done by the Summit’s diverse participants and to give attendees the opportunity to learn from others about what’s happening across greater Chicagoland. The team also wanted to allow attendees the opportunity to build on each other’s efforts. Often someone from a different sector can easily identify a new pathway or audience or make critical connection even when they are hearing something for the very first time.
EDUCATION current efforts mentioned were surprisingly few given the large proportion of educators (approximately 30%) were in the room. This could be because many attendees were already familiar with how to compost, and the conversation was instead focused on how to expand ease of and access to composting services in the region. This by no means is a full and complete list of the efforts in Greater Chicagoland, but rather a small sample. Efforts from Illinois Food Scrap & Composting Coalition (IFSCC) and Illinois Extension are well- documented due to the number of representatives from both organizations at the Summit. Other non-profits mentioned as currently providing education include Academy for Global Citizenship, Illinois Stewardship Alliance (ISA), Zero Waste Schools Program, SCARCE, The Conservation Foundation (Will County), and Urban Growers Collective. Special educational events and initiatives included 1-day compost collection events (such as the collaborations with Illinois Extension and partners like Plant Chicago, the Village of Park Forest, and Garfield Park Conservatory), International Compost Awareness Week (led by IFSCC), If It Grows, It Goes (a marketing campaign to spur compost usage from IFSCC) and Soil Health Week (led by ISA). Government-led education efforts were mentioned as coming from SWALCO (Solid Waste Agency of Lake County) and the City of Chicago’s pilot food scrap composting at NeighborSpace community gardens. The US Composting Council Composter Handbook was mentioned as a good national resource for educators. And it was noted that general composting education was happening in schools and via small community programs. A list of comments on Current Efforts in Education are displayed in Table 4, Appendix 1. INFRASTRUCTURE current efforts, like education current efforts, were not thoroughly documented with many comments needing to be recategorized as barriers or opportunities. In general, infrastructure current efforts fell into two broad categories, collection, and processing . Collection efforts were either free public drop off programs (Plant Chicago and Urban Growers Collective) and collection events or private fee-based drop-off and
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