USCC Membership Involvement for Advancing the Compost Industry

The USCC’s advocacy program works in service of our mission to advance the Composting Industry for the benefit of our members. To do that, we have to constantly monitor what is going on at the State and Federal levels and bring the important issues affecting the composting industry to the attention of our members so they can assist us in responding to these issues!

The last few months have been a perfect example of this, as we have been using a variety of methods to inform our members of what is going on at the State and Federal levels and requesting their involvement to hopefully effect changes in federal and state actions.

Our Compost Action Center campaigns make it as easy as possible for compost advocates to submit comments to their elected officials. The USCC has been sharing the campaign concerning the US Department of Agriculture’s Reorganization Plan that would impact the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland directly to the Secretary of the USDA. We appreciate that 161 advocates responded to our USDA BARC Compost Action Center Campaign.

We also alerted our Washington State members about the open comments period for the Washington DEQ’s Rulemaking for WAC 173-350 Organics Rule Revision. We created a sample comment that advocates could use to express their concern about the implications that the revisions to WAC 173-350 would have on source-separated organics. Twenty-one compost manufacturers or industry affiliates operating in the State of Washington submitted comments on the rulemaking process. The State of Washington’s Ecology Department has acknowledged and published the comments received, which you can read here, and is in the process of reviewing them as they draft the Rule Revisions. We will keep you informed as the Rulemaking process continues!

We appreciate all that responded to our CAC campaigns and encourage more of our members to take a few minutes to respond through our very simple but effective Compost Action Center process as we roll out new campaigns. And we already have a new CAC campaign that we need your help with! 

In mid-August, the US Department of Commerce announced that it was adding more than 400 new tariff lines to the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff lists. The Composting Industry is very dependent upon construction and agricultural equipment and related supplies to receive, manufacture, and apply compost products. A significant percentage of this equipment is either constructed overseas or manufactured in the U.S. using aluminum and steel produced overseas.

We need your support through contacting your congressional representatives and asking them to pressure the current administration to reconsider including construction and agriculture equipment and related supplies in the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, due to the reliance of the Compost manufacturing industry on this heavy equipment and the steel and aluminum that is imported to manufacture them. To make this quick and easy for you, the Compost Action Center has a template for you to use and send directly to your House and Senate Representatives. Help us support the Compost Manufacturing industry through this effort, and please let us know of any responses that you receive from your House and Senate Representatives.

We are also conducting a Member Poll to survey how a possible Federal Government shutdown would impact our members if it goes into effect on October 1st, and your feedback is especially important now that it has gone into effect! We will use your anonymous response in our efforts to let our Federal representatives know of the impact the Federal Government Shutdown is having on the Compost Industry.

Another tool that we are currently using with our members of the State Legislative Subcommittee is a Google Document Form with questions on how the first year of this Subcommittee went and if it was of value to those that participated in it. Their feedback is important to our efforts to improve our State legislation advocacy efforts while also using their time in the most effective manner. And again, our information received is only as good as the level of participation of our members surveyed.

To put it simply, we will use every tool at our disposal to reach out to you, our valuable members, to help strengthen our Composting Industry which is vital to our Country, our States, our Communities and to you our Members. We understand the time that each campaign asks of you, and we also understand that there can be more than one being sent to your mailboxes at the same time, but we truly appreciate your taking the time to respond to them. Please continue to help us help you!