We are proud to announce a collaboration between Westside community leaders, nonprofit groups, and businesses has resulted in the Zero Waste Westside project. After three months of planning, Goodr, community education enterprise Green is Lyf, and urban agriculture nonprofit Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture (TLW) joined forces to create a community-based, zero-waste business enterprise.
The Zero Waste Westside project will demonstrate the power of composting to process food waste, produce more compost, and grow more food. Zero Waste Wetside was created to educate and empower the Westside Atlanta community to understand more about food waste, how it negatively impacts our environment, and how each resident and business can start composting to reduce the impacts of food waste on the Westside.
The project is designed to accomplish three things:
- build awareness about the environmental impact of food waste
- mobilize food waste recovery and waste diversion services for neighborhoods and households on the Westside of Atlanta
- scale composting operations at TLW’s Collegetown Farm
As part of the project’s goal to reach 2000 Westside residents/businesses in 90 days, Green Is Lyf will lead community education and engagement around the program, Goodr will offer 30 days of our Organics Recycling service free to Westside businesses, and all organics collected from these businesses will be provided to Truly Living Well for proper composting. Residents on the Westside will also be encouraged to begin their composting journey by bringing their compost to Truly Living Well’s Collegetown Farm.
The $200,000 in funding for this project originated from the Just Transition PowerForce, a collaborative group of environmental, finance, energy, and climate justice leaders. The PowerForce was launched in 2020 by Emerald Cities Collaborative and the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program in relationship with Microsoft Cloud Operations and Innovation (CO+I), the team responsible for Microsoft datacenter operations.
The Zero Waste Westside Kickoff
To celebrate the launch of the Zero Waste Westside Project, Truly Living Well hosted a day at their farm for the project partners, community members, and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens. The launch celebration was full of fun, fellowship, and great words from each of the project partners, the funding partners, and Mayor Dickens. It was an honor to kick off this community-based zero waste project in the community, and with the community
To learn more about the Zero Waste Westside project, visit zerowastewestside.com. We will continue to share updates about the project and our progress to move the Westside of Atlanta to zero waste.
