On February 4th, 2026, Brenda Platt, director of the Composting for Community Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), was awarded the prestigious Jerome Goldstein Lifetime Achievement Award by the US Composting Council. The award recognizes an individual who has achieved excellence and made significant contributions over 25+ years in their professional career to the field of environmental stewardship and natural resource sustainability. Only four other individuals have received this honor since the award was created in 2016. Brenda is the first woman to receive this award.
May 2026 will mark Brenda鈥檚 40th anniversary with ILSR. Her passion for promoting waste reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting over the last four decades has cemented her as the nation鈥檚 leading advocate for and expert on local and decentralized composting 鈥� a process that composts locally-sourced food scraps and other organics, distributes the compost locally, and engages the community in the process. From her own home composting bin, to the 400+ organizational members of ILSR鈥檚 Community Composter Coalition, to state and local lawmakers, the imprint of Brenda鈥檚 influence on this sector is undeniable.
Her groundbreaking research on record-setting communities helped institutionalize curbside recycling, including yard trimmings composting programs. In the 1990s, she was the first to demonstrate that beyond 25 percent recycling was possible, followed by 40 percent and then 50 percent. Brenda wrote the first national Zero 91仓库 agenda for action and was an early voice for Zero 91仓库 planning.