Category: Blog

The Good Food Gathering

December 18, 2025

Here at the Compost Education Centre, we see composting as essential for the cultivation of good food. Yet compost is just one ingredient in the recipe for good food – we also need growers, distributors, chefs, teachers, elders, researchers, and youth.

On November 27^th, I was grateful to be able to attend the 10^th Annual Good Food Gathering (GFG), where I was able to learn about the work of many folks involved in these various roles throughout the Capital Region District. The Good Food Network exists to support and connect us, which is facilitated by CRFAIR.

As a relative newcomer to the “food system” scene, I was particularly excited for this event. As I stepped into the spacious upper hall of the Gorge Pavillion, with a beautiful view of the Gorge waterway, the room was abuzz with reunions, new connections, fruitful discussions – and of course, delicious food. Though I was feeling a bit shy in this busy room, throughout the day many people introduced themselves to me and made me feel welcome and shared a bit about their work with me.

The day began with an overview of the current context surrounding food systems – how recent years have seen skyrocketing grocery prices but stagnating farmer incomes and increasing food insecurity, especially among equity-denied groups. Despite these growing concerns, many folks have made large strides in our region’s food system over the past 10 years, from Flourish!’s school food programs to Pauquachin First Nation’s clam garden restoration to the development of regional FoodHubs, there is much to celebrate.

After this (and my favourite part of the day), 10 individuals shared stories about their work, their successes and challenges. During these stories, I was especially excited by the work of Ariel at Iyé Creative, where they have done significant research into increasing community capacity to grow culturally relevant food crops. Importantly, a key learning from the Good Food Gathering was that we still have a lot of work to do in our region around supporting the cultivation of cultural foods and prioritizing Indigenous food systems. For those of us engaged (or wanting to engage!) with our local food systems, it is of the utmost importance that we envision food that feeds not only our bodies, but our minds and spirits, and serve everyone equally  – and this is what I took away from this awesome day.

Though there was much more that occurred at the GFG, such as an afternoon of group discussions and a yummy lunch, I will leave it there. For myself (and I think others) this was a day to look back, celebrate our successes, name our challenges and shortcomings, and look to the future, energized and focused!

Posted in Blog, Events, Food Security, News

New Composting Resources for Businesses

December 17, 2025

Here at the Compost Education Centre our education has mostly revolved around supporting residents of the Capital Regional District compost at home. And we have more expertise than that! Over the years we’ve offered informal business consultation, answering many questions from the public about composting at a workplace or at their business. We decided in 2025 to formalize some of this education by offering free “Composting and Food Waste Reduction for Businesses in the CRD” webinars and writing and publishing a free “Composting for Businesses” factsheet to add to our awesome list of other factsheets. Businesses in the Capital Regional District don’t have waste management services provided to them like some municipalities provide for single family dwellings (e.g. curbside garbage and organics collection) so a business is responsible for managing their own waste. Different businesses tackle this in different ways, and there are a few different options with different benefits and drawbacks. To try and provide an overview of possibilities and to provide some context for why waste management for businesses matters, we wrote this Factsheet. Check it out! And we’ve also scheduled a couple more “Composting and Food Waste Reduction for Businesses in the CRD” FREE webinars, so join us on Feb 4 or May 14. See you there.

Posted in Announcement, Blog, Composting, Fact Sheet, Waste Diversion

Advancing Equity and Justice Days

November 29, 2025

I’ve done a lot of learning over my past 2 ½ years as Executive Director of the Compost Education Centre. I’ve had the awesome opportunity to learn from my colleagues, community, and more broadly, the global network of people who work to advance equity and justice. I’ve learned how to do the minutiae of the day-to-day better, and I continue to learn hard-earned lessons about the responsibility of a community non-profit within a broader movement of liberation.

Over two years ago, my thoughtful and politically informed colleagues were struck – and horrified – by the genocide unfolding in Palestine. At the time, I was urged by my coworkers to do and say something. My first response was the sense that it was not appropriate for an organization with a mission of composting education to engage in broader political action and dialogue. I have since learned that that moment was an opportunity that I wasted – I neither supported my staff in a severe moment of grief and horror nor did I recognize the unique ability of the Compost Education Centre as a non-profit to connect a local community to broader political dialogue, education, and action.

Because while our day-to-day work is hyper-localized and rooted in sharing accessible skills for waste diversion, composting, conservation, and organic gardening, it is connected to broader movements for liberation from systemic oppression. A just and sustainable food system is inherently linked to broader issues of peace and social justice.

As part of my learnings and to recognize the power the Compost Education Centre has to enable conscious action and support employee wellness, we have now integrated the following into our Employee Policy Manual:

• Staff are empowered to take bereavement leave to process the grief of the present moment and the weight of its history.
• The organization collates and shares existing resources such as mutual aid, counselling, workshops, and fundraisers among team members.
• The organization pauses our operations at strategic moments. The decision to pause our operations at strategic moments will be taken by staff via a consensus-based decision-making model after a landscape survey of other organizational actions.
• Each full-time staff member can access three paid “Advancing Equity and Justice” days to enable the participation in activities and organizing around advancing equity and justice outside of the work we do together. These days can be used for participation in activities (e.g. volunteering, advocacy, and education) that promote equity, inclusion, and justice. The activities must align with the organization’s anti-oppression policy.

These initiatives were inspired by recommendations made by Evenings & Weekends Consulting.

As an individual, I continue to reflect critically on my own actions and the systemic dynamics that foster oppression. As an organization, we commit to a continuous cycle of identifying, confronting, and dismantling discrimination and oppression within our culture, operational frameworks, and structures. And as a community, we look to connect with broader calls to action, empower and amplify marginalized voices, and foster an environment of feedback and improvement.

Posted in Anti-oppression, Blog

The Ground Beneath Our Feet: Wrapping Up Another Successful Year of Soil Contamination Research

October 31, 2025

By Martyna Tomczynski, Healing City Soils Program Manager

This year marked another successful chapter in the Healing City Soils: The Ground Beneath Our Feet student-led soil contamination research project. With the support of the PEPÁḴEṈ HÁUTW̱  Foundation, Dr. Matt Dodd at Royal Roads University (RRU) and environmental toxicologist Dr. Danielle Stevenson, the Compost Education Centre has been working with BSc in Environmental Science students at RRU over the last four years to better understand the legacy of heavy metal contamination from the industrial history at SṈIDȻEȽ (Tod Inlet, Gowlland Tod Park).

SṈIDȻEȽ (meaning “Place of the Blue Grouse” in SENĆOŦEN) was the first village site of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples (Elliott, 1990; Gray, 2020). The land and waters that supported a diverse ecosystem of cultural resources was eventually impacted by the effects of European settlement and colonization that altered the soil, sediment, and water health thereafter. The Douglas treaties enabled the acquisition and sale of the land to the Butchart family in 1903, who established the Vancouver Portland Cement Company that quarried limestone for cement production at SṈIDȻEȽ until 1921 (Gray, 2020). The full scope of environmental effects from the historical cement works is still unknown, though various organizations have been leading initiatives to restore the health of the land and waters. At present, the site is enjoyed by the public as a provincial park for hiking, boating, and other recreation, and continues to be a significant area for cultural harvesting and spiritual purposes for the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples.

Over the past eight months, our team of four undergraduate students have been investigating the soil health at SṈIDȻEȽ. They conducted two days of soil sampling, collecting 140 samples for analysis using X-Ray Fluorescence to determine the spatial variability of heavy metal contamination. The GPS coordinates of each sampling location were used to create a map as a visual aid for contamination patterns. The outcomes of this research project will help to support the PEPÁḴEṈ HÁUTW̱ Foundation in their efforts to heal the land at SṈIDȻEȽ by identifying priority areas for targeted restoration activities.

Additionally, the student team analyzed heavy metals in Western Canada Goldenrod (Solidago lepida) plants that were grown and harvested from the site for a phytoremediation pilot experiment in 2024. This pilot research aims to understand the suitability of various plant species for soil remediation, and the beneficial effects of compost and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi as enhancements for improved metal uptake by plants.

As the year comes to a close, we’re excited to reflect on what the project team has accomplished and look ahead to the next steps. With each year, this project continues to grow—deepening our understanding of soil contamination and strengthening the connections between research, education, and community impact.

References

Elliott, D. (1990). Saltwater People. Edited by J. Poth. School District 62, Saanich, B.C. https://wsanec.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/saltwater-people-1983-delliot-sr-compressed.pdf

Gray, D.R. (2020). Deep and Sheltered Waters: The History of Tod Inlet. Royal BC Museum. Victoria, B.C.

Posted in Blog, Food Security, Healing City Soils, Partnerships, Programs

Composting Connections from Haida Gwaii

October 22, 2025

By Kayla

I recently had the valuable opportunity to see a medium scale community composting facility in operation in Old Masset on Haida Gwaii during a personal holiday. The community there has about 80 households filling 5-gallon buckets with food scraps from their kitchen, and then employees of the project pick up the bucket contents and bring them back to their EarthFlow composter – “an automated compost mixing and aeration system” inside a shipping container. Food waste is added to the shipping container, an auger breaks up and mixes the materials, automated irrigation can be toggled on and off depending on the moisture level of the feedstock, gases and emissions are captured in a biofilter before being released outside. While the community in Old Masset is still honing their process of storage, curing and use for the finished compost, they are excited that they are diverting a lot of waste from their landfill! Through this program they are building community, creating climate resilience as they process their own waste, creating a valuable soil amendment to nourish their sandy soils, and they are creating valuable employment opportunities for community members. I loved seeing this project in action and seeing Dave’s market garden where some of the finished compost is completing its curation phase.

Thank you so much to Calvin and Trudy and Filene from the Indigenous Zero Waste Technical Advisory Group for connecting me to Dave and for supporting such a great community scale composting operation in Old Masset. I’m very happy to hear that IZWTAG is also supporting many other composting systems of this scale across the province in different communities. Thank you to Dave for showing me around his market garden and garden scale composting operation and showing me the EarthFlow composter in action in Old Masset.

I feel so inspired to be connected to a wider community of people who care about stewarding the soil, reducing methane emissions from landfill, and building community resilience. Us compost keeners are everywhere 😉

Posted in Blog, Composting, Food Security, Reflections, Sustainability, Waste Diversion

Annual General Meeting

October 18, 2025

2025 Annual General Meeting

Thursday, November 20, 2025 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

At our Annual General Meeting (AGM), staff and board members of the CEC will review the important work that the organization accomplished in 2024. We will recap educational program achievements, new projects and programs.

CEC members in good standing will have the opportunity to vote on decisions that affect the future of the organization, including helping to elect new members to our Board of Directors.

Anyone can attend the CEC’s AGM. For members and non-members, attending our AGM is a great way to support the CEC and learn more about the work that we do here!

2024 Annual Report with Unaudited Financial Documents

Posted in Annual Report, Blog, Events, Uncategorized

Looking for Strategic Clarity

September 12, 2025

by Claire

When I first started at the Compost Ed Centre (about 2 ½ years ago!), I remember being awestruck – and frankly, a bit overwhelmed – by all the different things the organization was doing. I was a new Executive Director after several years of turnover in the position (although amazingly, very little turnover in other staff positions), and I felt like we were in transition as an organization. In the absence of stable and consistent strategic leadership, I saw what I called “mission spill,” (or what someone else generously and thematically referred to as “organic growth amidst resource scarcity”). We were doing a little bit of everything related to composting, gardening, and conservation; and while those three topics are interrelated, I was finding it difficult to express with confidence what it was we were trying to achieve and whether we were being effective.

We did an initial strategic planning session in the first year I was at the organization, and the process was positive. It consisted of a staff retreat, surveying our community and key stakeholders, a facilitated weekend discussion with staff and board, and follow-up staff discussions. We came to a shared understanding that we were doing great work that our community appreciated. And our community’s hopes for the future? That we keep doing what we do – and possibly expand!

However, due a lack of time and expertise, our initial strategic planning process created a sense of overwhelm because of how much time we collectively spent in a “generative” mode without creating much-needed strategic clarity tools like an impact statement, theory of change, or action plan. We started a lot of conversations without finishing them, produced a wish list of blue-sky ideas, and left feeling like we had added a lot to our plate without taking anything off it.

It felt very clear to me after a year in the Executive Director position that we didn’t have any strategic guardrails in place. We were doing a little bit of everything – and our community loved it – but we couldn’t assess how impactful we were being. At a more foundational level, we hadn’t articulated our hypotheses around our intended impact and theory of change – and that made it difficult to figure out our strategic priorities and action plan.

• Intended impact statement: A clear and rigorous statement of the impact that it will hold itself accountable for achieving
• Theory of change: A logical flow describing how their work leads to achieving that intended impact.
• Strategic priorities and action plan: an outline of the work required to implement the theory of change.

At this point in the process, I was beyond grateful to connect with Stephanie and Véro of Garrow & Evoy. With the support of MakeWay funding through Innoweave, a core group of staff and board members embarked on an almost 12-month process of developing our intended impact statement, theory of change, and action plan. We discussed, consulted with stakeholders, analyzed our programs, and discussed again. We were well-supported by our coaches Stephanie and Véro, and they led us – with insightful and challenging questions, endless examples from other organizations, and a lot of enthusiastic support – to our “final” products.

Check out our Theory of Change (beautifully assembled by Zoe-Blue) and let us know what you think.

Posted in Announcement, Blog, Reflections, Stategic Planning

Compost Education Centre Public Art Efforts – Community Feedback

September 11, 2025

The Compost Education Centre (CEC), with financial support from the City of Victoria’s My Great Neighbourhood Grant and a micro-grant from the Fernwood Neighbourhood House, has hired an artist (Taylor Pannell) to beautify the exterior fencing of the demonstration site at 1216 North Park Street, to paint a new picnic table for all to enjoy, and to paint a mural on the street surface near the entrance to the CEC demonstration site. We’re working to create a warm, welcoming, and approachable environment for all City residents to come and spend time relaxing in the gardens or learning about hands on regenerative soil practices.

There are three main elements to these efforts: 

1. Fence beautification: To beautify the chain link fence while also bringing together community, community members are welcome to paint metal or wooden Flora and Fauna representative of the work we do at the CEC to attach them to the fence. Timeline: October community event 

2. Picnic Table art: There is a need for additional seating within the demonstration & allotment gardens at the CEC. In partnership with ReWood we will build a new picnic table, to replace a near fallen apart picnic table to create seating area for people to dwell longer in the gardens The CEC has some milled Eucalyptus wood from a tree that was cut down because of a neighbouring development that will be used as the material. The Artist in Residence will paint a design on top of the table. Timeline: November painting.

 3. Street Mural on North Park Street: To create a colourful and welcoming approach for our new neighbours at the Caledonia development and to make the entrance of the CEC & Chambers Community Allotment Garden more noticeable, the Artist will paint a road top mural featuring elements of plants, healthy soil, community cohesion. Timeline: end of April/early May for street mural painting, with a community celebration and garden party to celebrate the mural in the following weeks. 

Sign up for our newsletter here to ensure you stay in the loop about the elements of this project or leave your email address in the form below to ensure you’re in the loop.

Posted in Blog, News

AI Usage at the Compost Education Centre

August 16, 2025

Every week, I receive surveys, webinar invites, and articles about nonprofit AI usage. I’m not an expert, but it’s not difficult to see how tools like ChatGPT are polluting both the internet and the environment. 

 With every iterative use of a large language model, we move farther away from authentic human creativity and writing. AI tools are fed with AI-generated content (and so on, to the nth degree) to generate new content. As we increase the quantity of AI-generated content, the amount of human-generated content fed into models will proportionately decrease. And without high-quality human inputs, large language models deteriorate, and the internet will (or arguably has already) become littered with a reduced quality and diversity of information. Yuck! And if you care about the environment, let’s try to remember the staggering amount of electricity demand and water consumption that’s wrapped up in AI usage. 

And the weirdest thing about it from a cultural perspective? Because everyone else is using AI to churn out reams of documents that take up the time and attention of our shared stakeholders, it can start to feel like you also must use AI to keep up. Carleton University’s “Charity Insights Canada Project” shares snapshots of how other nonprofits around the country are using AI. Most respondents are interested in exploring or expanding the use of AI tools in grant writing and reporting, marketing and communications, fundraising campaigns, etc. 

I can’t help but wonder, “Will a prospective funder recognize that I put in a lot of time, energy, and emotions to actively researching, writing, and proofreading this proposal? Will they be able to tell that it came from me instead of an AI tool? Will what I write somehow end up as an input into someone else’s AI-generated grant proposal?” 

We reflected upon the current state of AI usage at a recent staff meeting. People shared their experiences and whether they’ve ever used it at work. We shared a consensus that we have no interest in using AI. If we use AI, it is largely by accident, and we’re seeking out resources to help us discern what is AI-generated and what is not. Following our conversation, I drafted an AI Usage Policy to communicate recommendations, usage risks, and a framework to guide employee usage when/if it happens. 

In addition to the specific AI usage policy (see below) to guide employee behavior, we’ve also added a line to our template job application process discouraging the use of AI. We don’t want you using ChatGPT to write a cover letter! We want to hear from you as a creative human with unique experiences.  

Let us know if you have any thoughts! And feel free to use the AI Usage Policy below for your own workplace. 

AI Usage Policy 

There are specific risks associated with using large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and AI-generated content for the workplace, information quality, and internet quality. 

• Workplace risks include data governance (i.e. organizational data is transferred outside of organizational control as an input to an LLM, which can then be stored by the LLM for other uses) and data security (i.e. sensitive/private information could be entered as an input and then leaked). 

• Information quality risks include email phishing campaigns, influence campaigns (i.e. dissemination of misinformation/disinformation to influence beliefs and behaviors), and inability to identify LLM-generated content (i.e. there are no good tools to identify AI-generated content, which means that misinformation/disinformation can propagate). 

• Internet quality risks are related to how LLMs operate, which is that they inherit inaccuracies and biases present in the data. With ongoing and increased usage of LLMs, inaccuracies and biases will propagate and result in a lowered quality of information on the internet. 

In addition to the risks above, we feel strongly that human creativity and critical thinking can’t be replaced – only mimicked – by generative AI.  

Based on these risks and our values, use of LLMs and generative AI tools are discouraged at the Compost Education Centre. However, if deemed necessary, the following points guide employee usage: 

1. Employees may use Copilot (microsoft.com) to generate content. No other platform is approved for use. 

2. Employees will not rely on AI summaries (e.g. Google’s AI Overviews) to gather information from the internet, but they will instead click through to search results. 

3. Employees will not enter sensitive or confidential data into an AI tool. 

4. Employees must edit, proofread, and check AI-generated content for accuracy and biases before publication/dissemination. 

Posted in Anti-oppression, Blog

Is it too late?

August 14, 2025

Recently, the famous Canadian environmentalist, David Suzuki was interviewed by iPolitics and, contrary to his typically direct but hopeful rhetoric, he shared his current wisdom about climate change: “it’s too late.”

It was shocking to read even though I’ve acknowledged to myself and my community that I believe we are in a slow downward state of collapse of the environment, social systems, and the economy. While I am someone who has stayed hopeful but also abreast of the current science that projects us towards a deathly trajectory, it was still a depressing corroboration to hear that sentiment from a public figure.

Suzuki concluded his interview with a sliver of hope that I both share and practice. As a community, we can support one another through mutual aid. A real barefoot doctors’ approach to caring for community. We can practice decentralized support to survive pending climate chaos, socioeconomic destabilization, and more general discomfort. This kind of thought and action calms my nervous system: I support my neighbours, store extra liters of water in my garage for my friends, appreciate and share my skills in growing food, continue to nourish soil with compost, and teach others to do the same.

I listened to a follow up podcast interview with Suzuki, and I enjoyed hearing more from him about current politics and the state of science and fossil fuel extraction. His rants are compelling and true, and they fire me up. What Suzuki shared was the opposite of apathy. It instead was a call to END to fossil fuel extraction as well as an acknowledgment that our current economic system is not complementary to environmental protection and Indigenous justice. He shared that we don’t know what the heck will happen when we reach certain climate thresholds, but that we can support our friends, family, neighbours, and community to be prepared — physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually — for what might be yet to come.

The takeaway I want to share with you is that right now is the moment to do what you can to learn and practice resilience including nervous system regulation, food growing, composting, preserving foods, herbal medicine, and more. Do these things with your community and for your community, and you’ll be more well resourced in unstable times.

Posted in Blog, Reflections