Top: The US Composting Council’s (USCC) new toolkit walks the user through five tiers of compost zoning readiness. Photo courtesy USCC

The US Composting Council (USCC) released The Good Neighbor Compost Zoning Toolkit, a guide to help assess where a community is in its readiness for various composting zoning categories. The Toolkit builds on the USCC’s January 2022 Model Zoning Template, which it describes as a “cut and paste” document for local municipal planners, while allowing leeway for local conditions. The new Toolkit is designed for states, counties, cities and advocates that want to site a composting facility under appropriate local regulations. The frame for this information, explains the USCC, is a 2023 Case Study of Columbus, Ohio, as well as a comparability index for use by other communities. Included is a Compost Facility Assessment Checklist, which asks:

• Is the audience a rural county/city/regional or an urban setting?
• What are the overall acceptance and legal conditions concerning composting operations?
• What are local building codes?
• Who are your stakeholders?
• What is the jurisdiction’s policy on sustainability? Is there a Climate Action Plan, Zero Waste Plan or other sustainability goal?
• Who are other competitors? What is the scale of their operations and willingness to collaborate?
• What kind of facility is most feasible and beneficial to the community?

A key component of the Toolkit is the “Five Municipal Composting Readiness Tiers:” 1. No Zoning/No Activity; 2. Minimal Zoning/Minimal Activity; 3. Specific Language/Developed Activity; 4. Accommodating Language/Cumulative Activity; and 5. Role Model. Each tier is defined, and includes a short case study of communities in each of the five tiers. For example, Tier #3, Specific Language/Developed Activity is defined as communities that “have made specific zoning updates to include composting as a permissible use in certain zones, or there are some commercial composting activities which can operate without changes to zoning codes. An example is provision for a drop-off facility for solid waste, which is then transferred to a composting facility.” An example of a Tier Three community is Altoona, Wisconsin, which allows for backyard composting and small-scale composting.

Authors of The Good Neighbor Zoning Toolkit are Michael Price, Ohio State University, Dr. Angel Arroyo-Rodriguez, Ohio EPA, and Linda Norris-Waldt, US Composting Council.