A grassroots project is launching in Detroit to divert organic waste and support community composting. 

It comes amid a Wednesday announcement from the state of a more than $1 million investment in composting and food waste reduction projects in the city. 

Over the last year, the Detroit Community Compost Collection Project (DCCCP) has worked to shape a compost pilot in Detroit to tackle the 251 million pounds of food waste created in the city each year. The collective seeks to prioritize data gathering, education and outreach around community composting in Detroit, with a commitment to environmental justice. Members include: 

•  Sanctuary Farms, 
• Detroit Black Food Sovereignty Network
• Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund
• Detroit Food Policy Council
• Sacred Spaces
• Oakland Avenue Urban Farm

It’s one of several recent initiatives in Detroit aimed at creating a citywide or community composting system. This spring the city is launching a small, residential compost pilot. In 2022 Detroit community groups worked with experts in the Philippines to pilot a community compost system in Detroit. 

 “We are still not at the level where one pilot solved all the questions,” said jøn kent, a member of the collective, co-founder of urban farm Sanctuary Farms, and president of Sacred Spaces, an environmental justice nonprofit committed to creating equitable access to green spaces in historically underserved communities. “There’s more data to be collected and there’s more things to be learned.”

In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, DCCCP hopes to help build healthy soil for Detroit’s food system in the midst of a global decline in soil health. 

While participants and the structure are still being worked out, the project team has a budget for 200 people to participate in backyard and community composting, including paying participants to collect and share compost data. The pilot will work with seven different farm sites in the city. It’s a small number of participants, but an important start, said kent. 

The work is supported with a grant from Industrious Labs, a clean technology advocacy and research organization focused on reducing emissions from heavy industry. DCCCP and Industrious Labs declined to share the grant amount. 

Separately, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) on Wednesday granted DCCCP members Sanctuary Farms and the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network $210,000 and $175,000, respectively, for composting work. The grants were part of a total of $11.8 million in recycling grants for groups across the state. 

Tepfirah Rushdan, director of the City of Detroit’s Office of Sustainability, helped create the DCCCP.

“The goal is to try to merge all the work together, using multiple organizations and funding streams and things like that to make it work in Detroit,” she said. 

The city’s compost pilot, which got off the ground with $100,000 from Carhartt, did not receive funding in the $3 billion budget for 2025-26. Rushdan said she is seeking funding for it. 

“We’re just not there yet – we’ll get through this pilot year,” she said. 

About 35 people attended the first community engagement session on the pilot and the city reviewed a draft of a compost ordinance the City Planning Commission is working on, Rushdan said. The city declined to release the draft, but Rushdan said a second community engagement session is planned. 

“Building this decentralized [composting] system – I think we can do it. I think we have all the actors in place,” said Rushdan, acknowledging there are a few challenges like educating residents and internal actors at the city about composting.

Some Detroit restaurant owners, for example, aren’t aware that compostable cups need to be put in a special industrial compost system to be composted, and cannot be thrown in the trash.

The public may undervalue composting as a climate solution as well. Food waste, if composted, can turn into a nutrient-rich additive to soil to grow more food, creating a closed loop system. If thrown in the trash, food scraps create harmful greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, accounting for 8-10% of all greenhouse gas emissions according to a 2021 United Nations report. Food is the most common item thrown in the landfill globally, and accounts for 37% of all waste in Michigan. 

The earth’s temperature is expected to rise 2˚C by 2100. In this scenario, composting is a more effective climate intervention than plastics recycling, according to Project Drawdown, which provides resources on climate solutions. Plastic recycling tends to receive more attention and funding.

Karn Saetang, a senior field strategist for Industrious Labs, said his group is funding the pilot to help Black organizations. 

“We want to build power for grassroots BIPOC organizations” and educate and work with young people around composting, he said. 

“It’s super important to center young people… so that eventually, when they grow up, get older, they also understand the importance of the relationship between waste and communities.” 

Schools can provide a rich opportunity for composting.

Gesu Catholic School in northwest Detroit began composting alongside  other methods to reduce food waste and, as a result, cut back on food waste by 87%. It saved the school $150 per month on trash bags alone, according to the nonprofit Make Food Not Waste.

Winona Bynum is the executive director of the Detroit Food Policy Council. She said the pilot is about convincing the city that residents want composting, and that it can be done successfully.

“So that we can shift from putting this valuable resource in the landfill and move to making sure that it goes back into our food system and making sure that our soil is healthy,” she said.