My Hopes for the Industry Moving Forward

Frank Franciosi
Executive Director

Decades before joining the US Composting Council, my composting journey began when I started my tree service business in New Jersey. We would unload the ground-up limbs and wood chips at a local nursery, where they’d use the material as mulch. I remember one winter after we dumped our usual batch, I felt the heat coming out of a batch we dropped off two days before. I was fascinated by it and realized this was more than just mulch; it was a byproduct that could be something more.

Inspired, I began composting in my own backyard, learning through trial and error while also reading “The Rodale Book of Composting.” It was during this experimenting I learned many valuable lessons, one being the importance of the carbon-nitrogen ratio in a pile when I saw how high the temperature of my pile jumped after adding chicken manure, a rich source of nitrogen. My background in horticulture helped me in understanding the information and process quicker, it was the time and labor of experimenting with my own pile that set a strong foundation for a career in the composting industry.

After a decade in commercial lawn care and tree services and moving around for work, I came to North Carolina to work as the general manager and up-and-coming composting facility in Rocky Mount. This is when I joined the USCC and attended the Maryland School of Composting. I also subscribed to BioCycle Magazine and read it religiously from cover to cover. I still have some of those cherished copies. I developed lifelong friendships with fellow USCC members, colleagues, and mentors who have helped me learn the science, art, and business of composting. We worked with many different agricultural and industrial feedstocks, and it became the first source-separated compost facility in the state. It was just like composting in my backyard: trial and error. Whether it was ag waste, animal mortalities, leftover material from a fiberboard plant – it was an environment to try new things and see what sold and didn’t. And because there was no competition for dark rich compost in the land of red clay, we managed to sell tons.

This was more than three decades ago, and I’ve seen this industry grow to incredible heights since then. Yet, we could still do more to help our communities understand the importance of composting and diverting organics. Organics diversion can ease the strain landfills put on municipalities, lengthening the lifespan of a landfill and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases like methane. It’s also important we share the environmental benefits of compost use for things like soil erosion prevention and stormwater management.

The benefits can be financial, too. Municipalities can develop a market for their finished compost products, and additional quality control and testing can make their customer base confident that the final product is reliable and safe for whatever it’s applied to. Public-private partnerships are also an alternative that have shown strong results. Ultimately, there’s a lot of good that can be done with greater awareness of our industry and the financial investment into it.

As I look back on my career, I think about all the people and organizations that have motivated and inspired me along the way. While there is always work to do, I can say I’m confident in the next generation to continue to push the urgent need for better composting accessibility across the country and the world.