ABOUT DCCI

Delaware Community Composting Initiative (DCCI)

DCCI Mission

DCCI is a PFD program that aims to offer educational programs to our community, facilitate collaboration, and provide technical assistance to help reduce food waste going to Delaware landfills. We offer food waste reduction and prevention educational programs and backyard and community composting training programs. Additionally, we implement campus and community composting sites to divert source-separated food-scraps from the landfill, turning it into useable soil.

What is composting, and why should we?

Composting is the controlled process of the decomposition of organic materials. In Delaware, 25% of what we send to the landfill is organic matter. We could instead compost that material, and put those nutrients back into local soils, which will help close the loop on the local food system and improve our carbon footprint by reducing landfill methane emissions.

Mike Parkowski, Delaware Solid Waste Authority,
at the ribbon cutting for Delaware’s first community composting site
at the Talley Day Park (January 2024):

“These are just the start, and are necessary to build the future. Momentum and awareness about composting need to build from the grassroots. This model being pursued by Plastic Free Delaware is the way to do it. It’s got to be one site at a time, one community at a time, and build over time. The only way we’re going to reach our goals to reduce food waste and divert organics from the landfill is to have programs like this. And then together with programs such as biodigesters at large institutions, and people doing backyard composting, and then schools that have garden clubs joining in, and so the momentum grows. Putting that all together, that’s how you start to make a difference, because we've seen the failure of the mass attempt at industrial composting in Wilmington which aimed to take everything from everywhere and expect it to work. It has to be people that want to do it. They get involved and really like that. I really believe the grassroots community composting sites are the way to go because people have sense of ownership, they do it right. They take care of it because they are participating and engaged. This is the way we will move composting and organics diversion forward in Delaware.”