Across Georgia, local governments are looking for practical climate solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen communities, and make smart use of limited budgets. One opportunity checks all of those boxes: composting.
Food and yard waste make up a significant portion of what ends up in landfills. When organic materials decompose in landfills without oxygen, they generate methane—a potent greenhouse gas. Diverting those materials into composting programs reduces landfill methane emissions while turning waste into a valuable resource that can support healthy soils, parks, gardens, and farms. Composting is one of the 20 proven, market-ready Drawdown Georgia climate solutions, and it’s one that local policymakers can influence directly.
For city and county leaders, composting is more than a waste diversion strategy. It can:
-
Extend landfill life and reduce disposal costs
-
Support local economic development and small businesses
-
Improve soil health for public landscaping, community gardens, and stormwater management
-
Create visible, tangible community benefits that build public support
In short, composting offers measurable emissions reduction and “beyond carbon” benefits: economic, environmental, and public health gains that align with the priorities many Georgia communities are already pursuing.
To help local governments move from interest to implementation, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance developed a guide for local governments that provides:
-
a practical roadmap for integrating composting into master plans, solid waste strategies, and climate action plans
-
enacting supportive policies
-
partnering with local organizations
-
designing equitable programs
-
securing funding
-
measuring results
For Georgia policymakers balancing budget constraints, community engagement, and data-driven decision-making, this framework offers a structured, scalable approach. Whether your jurisdiction is exploring a small pilot program or expanding an existing effort, composting can be tailored to local needs—curbside collection in dense neighborhoods, drop-off sites in rural areas, or partnerships with schools, farms, and community organizations.
As you review the guide below, consider how composting could support your community’s emissions reduction goals, economic development strategy, and commitment to serving all residents. Climate solutions that work for Georgia often start at the local level. Composting is one that brings climate solutions home in a visible, practical way.
How to Get Started: Twelve Steps for Government to Advance Local Composting
1. Adopt a framework to prioritize food waste prevention and composting strategies that maximize the social, economic, and environmental benefits to the local community:
How food waste prevention, rescue, and composting programs are designed and implemented matters. Prioritize locally based solutions over large-scale regional options. Favor local nonprofits, community organizations, worker-owned cooperatives, mission-driven social benefit enterprises, and the like over corporations with headquarters in faraway places.
See ILSR’s Hierarchy to Reduce Food Waste & Grow Community
2. Integrate local composting as a key strategy into formal government plans and roadmaps:
This creates opportunities for future development through funding, programs, and policies. Consider integration into master plans, solid waste management plans, climate action plans, sustainability plans, and food system resilience plans. Also, tie composting to healthy soils, stormwater management, community gardening, environmental and outdoor education, parks and recreation, beneficial land use, economic development, and job creation.
See ILSR’s Composting and Climate Action Plans: A Guide for Local Solutions
See Planning for Compost: Leveraging BioResources for Resilient Communities and Economies (People, Food, and Land Foundation)
3. Enact favorable policies:
Review and amend existing legislation and ordinances and pass new rules and regulations to remove obstacles to and support the success of composting. Consider zoning, procurement, permit requirements, right-to-compost, and more. Legislation or ordinances requiring local composting can facilitate budget approvals for programs.
4. Identify, support, and partner with existing local entities:
Are food scrap collection and composting service providers already operating? Support rather than compete with these small businesses and mission-driven organizations. Assess shared goals and explore how one or more partnerships can align priorities.
See ILSR’s Composting for Community Map
5. Get buy-in and feedback from the community:
Include stakeholders, community members, and elected officials throughout the process in order to uplift community voices and encourage buy-in. Stakeholder engagement is vital for the long-term success of programming.
See ILSR’s Composting and Climate Action Plans: A Guide for Local Solutions
6. Ensure equitable access and distribution of services:
Design programs to maximize inclusion and equity. Consider not only who has access to collection services but also who benefits from your financial investment. Do programs offer households options to participate without charge? Do multi-family households have access? Are outreach and education materials available in multiple languages?
See How to Keep Compost Local: Equitable Access and Distribution of Services
7. Determine programmatic elements:
Explore home composting, curbside collection, and drop-off sites. Address which materials to accept, keeping a laser focus on producing high-quality compost with minimal contamination. Tailor programs to the needs of your community. Pursue public-private partnerships where these make sense, and harness procurement and contracting ability to provide financial stability to partners. Learn from successful models and adapt the best features of the best programs.
See How to Keep Compost Local, Table 2. Case Study Partnership Elements
See the BioCycle Nationwide Survey: Residential Food Waste Collection Access In the U.S.
8. Fund and finance program(s):
Build composting program costs directly into budgets and seek to secure multi-year funding. Contracting directly with partners provides them with financial stability, especially if contracts cover multiple years and have renewal options. Apply for local, state, and federal grants and support partners in doing the same.
See How to Keep Compost Local: Financing
9. Identify land for composting and provide access:
Do you have available or underutilized land and properties? Could that land be used for local composting? Access to land is an obstacle to local composting that local governments can address.
See How to Keep Compost Local: Land Access
10. Conduct a pilot program:
Pilots offer an entry point for composting programs. Pilots provide the opportunity to test specific project elements, gather stakeholder input, and incorporate lessons learned. Successful pilots can transform into long-term municipal programs.
See case study on Washington, D.C.: From Farmers’ Markets to Curbside Collection
11. Educate and provide outreach:
Develop and launch a strong outreach and innovative marketing campaign to increase program participation. Provide culturally relevant resources in multiple languages, and be sure to address how to participate properly and avoid contamination. Partner with organizations that specialize in outreach and education, have relationships with schools, or have experience with social marketing. Offer training opportunities like a master composting course, which provides community members with the opportunity to support home composters and community composting sites.
See How to Keep Compost Local: Education and Outreach
See EPA’s Composting Food Scraps in Your Community: A Social Marketing Toolkit
12. Measure, evaluate, and improve:
Once a program is established, take steps to expand the reach and impact as appropriate to the community. Evaluate the program to determine the effectiveness of current approaches, where improvements can be made, and how the program can scale up. Consider not only waste reduction and program participation but also social, environmental, and economic development factors.
Subscribe to Stay Up to Date
Make sure you always have the latest news and stories from the Georgia climate community by subscribing to the Georgia Climate Digest.
You'll receive interviews, updates on Georgia’s progress on climate solutions, news from across the state, and actionable insights on climate delivered straight to your inbox twice a month.
Source: J. Spector, N. Goldstein, B. Platt, S. Jones, Keep Compost Local: A Roadmap for Local Government to Build Community Prosperity with Composting, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 2026 (https://ilsr.org/articles/composting-for-community/keep-compost-local-report). Reprinted with permission.
