San Francisco, CA | leo@zerofoodprint.org

Leo Beckerman serves as the Director of Operations for Zero Foodprint, ensuring programs and operations have the maximum impact in the fight against climate change. He oversees strategy and day to day management of programs including Compost Connector in California and the Restore Grants, available to land stewards implementing Climate Smart Agricultural practices in California, Colorado, Georgia, and New York. Co-Founder of Wise Sons Deli in the San Francisco Bay Area, he has experience in restaurant operations, large scale production, and business administration. He loves nurturing an idea into a full blown operation prepared for scale. Leo has a background in public health, education, and non-profit management, and has built and managed teams on four continents.

Session Code: D2

Track: California

Session Name: Compliance and Impacts

Session Time: Wednesday, Jan 25, 1:45 – 3:15 PM

Presentation Title: Leveraging CA’s New Compost Regulations for Carbon Sequestration – Jurisdictions Teaming up with Ag and Businesses on Carbon Farming

Presentation Description: SB1383 will result in sweeping change including ~5M additional tons of compost each year. Jurisdictions are facing an unfunded procurement mandate for the purchase of ~1.5M tons of compost per year. The regulations focus on organics diversion and food recovery, but the current procurement requirements do not incentive agricultural quality or use.

As each region operationalizes SB1383, organics diversion could result in a wide range of outcomes from immense prosperity and environmental benefit on fars, ranches and vineyards, or it could result in millions of tons of contaminated compost being “”procured”” and left as landfill cover. 
Zero Foodprint is a 501c.3 leading collaborations with the CA Department of Food and Ag, CA Air Resources Board, CalEPA and the CA Association of RCDs to scale agricultural climate solutions. Since 2020, ZFP has generated $780k for 42 farm projects with an estimated GHG benefit equal to not burning 3 million gallons of gas. ZFP developed a program and began contractual relationships with San Francisco, Alameda and San Mateo County to to optimize the outcomes from SB1383.

This takes form of agricultural project identification through ZFP’s Compost Connector Program, which maintains a database of hundreds of shovel ready compost application projects waiting for funds. And a parallel marketing effort with ACP: Compost.Ag–a hotels.com style platform to facilitate discovery among purchasers.