As Washington works to meet new organics diversion requirements under its Organics Management Law, community-scale systems are emerging as a critical component of a distributed, efficient, and resilient statewide organics infrastructure.
This webinar will feature technical insights from a panel of Washington operators actively advancing community-scale solutions: Al Cairns of Jefferson County, Zoey Gray of Methow Recycles, and Kate Wynne of B2G Compost. They’ll share practical approaches, operational insights, and on-the-ground strategies for building and scaling community-based composting in alignment with new statewide mandates. Brenda Platt of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) will moderate the conversation, tying these Washington examples to broader national trends in decentralized organics recycling.
Join us to connect with peers and learn directly from operators advancing community‑scale composting in Washington. This webinar offers a focused look at how distributed systems can add measurable capacity, boost resilience, and support statewide compliance with Washington’s organics diversion mandates.
Moderated by Brenda Platt of the Institute for Local Self‑Reliance (ILSR), the discussion will connect Washington examples to national trends in decentralized organics recycling.
Meet the Speakers:
Brenda Platt as moderator (ILSR)
Brenda Platt directs ILSR’s Composting for Community project, which is advancing locally based composting in order to create jobs, enhance soils, sequester carbon, reduce waste, and build more resilient and healthy communities. She has worked 35+ years fighting trash burners and promoting waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting, particularly recycling-based jobs.
In 2026, Brenda received the Jerome Goldstein Lifetime Achievement Award at the US Composting Council Annual Conference & Trade Show for her 40 years of leadership in the field of environmental stewardship and natural resource sustainability. She is the author of several groundbreaking reports including Beyond 40 Percent: Record-Setting Recycling and Composting Programs and the U.S. EPA’s Cutting the Waste Stream in Half. Her 2000 report for the GrassRoots Recycling Network, Wasting and Recycling in the United States 2000, includes a 10-page zero waste agenda for action. Her 2003 report, Resources up in Flames outlined the economic pitfalls of incineration versus a zero waste approach. Her 2008 report, Stop Trashing the Climate, documents that aiming for zero waste is one of the fastest, cheapest, and most effective strategies available for combating climate change. In 2013 she released Pay Dirt: Composting in Maryland to Reduce Waste, Create Jobs & Protect the Bay, followed a year later with: The State of Composting in the U.S.: What, Why, Where, & How and Growing Local Fertility: A Guide to Community Composting. Her most recent reports are BioCycle Residential Food Waste Collection Access Study, Yes! In My Backyard: A Home Composting Guide for Local Government, and Community Composting Done Right: A Guide to Best Management Practices.
She has a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from The George Washington University. She is a trained composter and has been licensed in Maryland to operate commercial composting facilities.
Ms. Platt is a member of the US Composting Council and its Environmental and Legislative Affairs Committee. She is a founding member of the GrassRoots Recycling Network and a past board member of the National Recycling Coalition and the Container Recycling Institute. She also co-led an award-winning Young Activist Club in her community that successfully worked to get styrofoam and other polystyrene out of schools and local foodservice businesses. In 2017, the US Composting Council awarded Brenda its H. Clark Gregory Award for outstanding service to the composting industry through grassroots efforts.
Zoey Gray (Methow Valley Recycles)
Zoey is the Low Waste Program Manager at Methow Recycles in the beautiful and rural Methow Valley. She works to promote a circular economy and to create community-oriented solutions to repair, reuse, and prevent waste. Her current programming includes community composting, a tool library, Repair Cafe, a building supply reuse store, repair education in the schools, and a teen Repair Corps service-learning program in the summer.
Kate Wynne (B2Green Compost)
Kate Wynne is owner/operate of B2G Compost LLC based in the small rural community of Winthrop, WA.
A retired biologist/ecologist, she was inspired to harness “microbial magic” in an ASP-based facility as a means of repurposing food waste into a high-quality amendment for nutrient-poor local soils.
Originally focused on composting local business organics, B2G is now also partnering with MethowRecycles in a program to divert residential food waste from entering the local landfill.”
Al Cairns (Jefferson Co)
Al Cairns has been in the public sector side of the Solid Waste industry for 15 years and has championed decentralized food waste diversion strategies for nearly all of them. He’s an amateur soil scientist and has created compost piles big and small, by hand and with heavy equipment, and learned the hard way not to build a pile with 3 tons of rotten shrimp in your own backyard.
He’s also fond of building uncommon partnerships with local businesses, school districts, and citizen led initiatives. He prefers to work behind the scenes so this panel discussion offers a rare sighting of him in daylight.
Registration is free, thanks to the generous support of our sponsors.
