Breathe Free Detroit, one of several groups credited with helping shut down the Detroit Renewable Power facility, is receiving monthly training from a Philippine zero-waste group, the Mother Earth Foundation. Zero-waste and sustainability advocates are working to develop a citywide composting system because they say such a system would create local jobs, decrease truck traffic and emissions from waste pickup and provide organic fertilizer for community gardens.

            Detroit organizers didn’t have much experience with community-wide composting, so when they began developing their program, they turned to Mother Earth, where composting is an ancestral practice. Over the last 20 years, the organization has earned a reputation for training low-income communities, government agencies, civic organizations and businesses in zero-waste practices.

            Breathe Free Detroit is a community- and grassroots-led campaign fighting to shut down the Detroit incinerator. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, food waste is the most common material found in landfills and sent to incinerators in the U.S. Composting and recycling could help reach net-negative waste sector emissions by 2030, according to a new report by GAIA.

For more information, call 313-626-2406, email [email protected] or visit Ecocenter.org/breathe-free-detroit.