Brenda Platt directs ILSR’s Composting for Community project, which is advancing locally based composting in order to create jobs, enhance soils, sequester carbon, reduce waste, and build more resilient and healthy communities. She has worked 33 years fighting trash burners and promoting waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting, particularly recycling-based jobs.

She has a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from The George Washington University. She is a trained composter and has been licensed in Maryland to operate commercial composting facilities.

Ms. Platt is a member of the US Composting Council and its Environmental and Legislative Affairs Committee. She is a founding member of the GrassRoots Recycling Network and a past board member of the National Recycling Coalition and the Container Recycling Institute. She also co-led an award-winning Young Activist Club in her community that successfully worked to get styrofoam and other polystyrene out of schools and local foodservice businesses. In 2017, the US Composting Council awarded Brenda its H. Clark Gregory Award for outstanding service to the composting industry through grassroots efforts.