The Tallest Pole in the Tent

Linda Norris-Waldt, Executive Director 

I'm not sure whether this expression comes from camping or the military (I suspect the latter, since a former colonel on the Frederick County commissioners used to use this term all the time), but the “tallest pole in the tent” generally means the driver of the topic at hand—the most important part of the project, or, to use another cliché, the “bottom line” when it comes to the critical essence of a problem or topic.
 
For compost infrastructure development, the true economic driver of the expansion of composting is quality compost. This is the assumed, often unspoken term behind all discussions of contamination, pricing, and highest and best use (the difference between compost and digestate, compost and fertilizer, etc.). For a reminder of the many benefits of compost, see the 2025 revamp of USCC's ever-popular Benefits of Composting white paper (most downloaded resource on our website!).
 
Even the audience at the Improving the Circularity of Compost and Compostables Denver meeting of 2024 was on board with this; an audience of about 35% composters/65% packaging industry allies voted for the project proposing a toolkit of resources and policies as the #1 needed project out of about 14 projects to be executed.*
 
The importance of quality compost underpins many of USCC's work, whether it is policies or projects:

• Demand: Building policy incentives and awareness of the benefits of compost in markets, both agricultural and non-agricultural (roadside/public use, brownfields, green infrastructure, landscape architecture, etc.).
• Generator responsibility: Educating households and holding commercial generators accountable for contaminated material (composters are not trash diverters, but product makers).
• Policy: For example, depackaging policies—a challenging industry issue weighing the ability of the technology to divert more food waste, yet wrestling with complex impacts.
• Compostable packaging: Today I answered another media request (we get two to three per month on average on this topic), asking about our position on compostables. While certified packaging itself is not a contaminant, both the packaging industry and composters and all allies need an industry-wide focus on education, greenwashing, and overall contamination.

Sometimes we drift away from our roots, but in the past couple of years I've seen USCC coming back around to the need to refocus on production and demand for quality compost. And not a moment too late: as a former recycling manager, I remember watching with dismay as single-stream collection decimated carefully nurtured recycling markets. I hear alarm bells sounding as I recognize some of the early signs in our own industry.
 
Use and sales of compost—the true infrastructure driver as well as soil health benefit—makes for a pretty clear tall pole in the tent to rally around.

*See the article about USCC's part in a recently awarded grant that was formulated as a result of the Compost Use Toolkit Committee from the Denver event! The article is titled "Ending Food Waste Within a Generation: Upcoming Project to Expand Compost Use" and is located in the Compost Use section of the Compost Communicator.