Achieving clean organics streams is challenging, especially when a ban pushes us to engage whole communities in separation. Getting individuals, businesses, and institutions to do a good job separating organics from non-compostable materials can be daunting.

Often the collective narrative reflects the idea that effective source separation is impossible because people 'just won't learn' or 'just don't care.' And yet, there are great examples of successful, community-wide, long-term programs that achieve exceptionally high rates of separation.

The key: recognize source separation as a change in behavior and support it as such. When source separation of organics is framed as simply following guidelines, without helping people understand the “why” behind it, we fail to acknowledge human psychology, how decision-making works in the brain, and the various cultural myths we need to resolve in order to successfully engage participants. However, haulers and composters who prioritize the human side of outreach and education, and build these into their programs as iterative processes, have achieved success!

In this VORS 2022 session we heard experiences from two panelists, who believe in and are committed to clean streams of organics for producing quality compost, protecting soil and ecological health, and stopping climate change.

Panelists and Video time stamps:

• 00:00 Introduction by Natasha Duarte

• 03:37 Dan Israel, Compost Crew (download a pdf of Dan’s slides)

• 28:25 Tom Gilbert, Black Dirt Farm (download a pdf of Tom’s slides)

• 01:04:31 Q&A and discussion