Green Star Award | Composting Leadership & Policy Impact in Los Angeles

My wife and partner, Kassady Wiggins, and I were honored to receive a Green Star Award from the City of Los Angeles in recognition of our work helping launch one of the city’s first restaurant composting pilot programs—an initiative that ultimately contributed to shaping California Senate Bill 1383, the state’s landmark food waste legislation.

Working alongside LA Sanitation and RecycLA, we partnered with local officials, environmental leaders, and fellow restaurateurs to develop practical, scalable systems that could reduce the amount of organic waste sent to landfills—a critical step in cutting methane emissions and building climate resilience in urban food systems.

Our work focused on:

• Designing and implementing back-of-house composting protocols

• Training restaurant teams on sorting best practices

• Collaborating with waste haulers and city agencies to ensure program feasibility

• Advocating for policy solutions that work for small businesses and sustainability goals

This pilot wasn’t just about diverting waste—it was about building a framework that the entire restaurant industry could adopt. Many of the systems we helped test and refine were used to inform SB 1383’s statewide rollout, which now requires food businesses across California to implement organic waste recovery programs.

Receiving the Green Star Award was a meaningful milestone, but more importantly, it reflected a shared belief: that climate solutions must be built collaboratively, with leadership from inside the kitchen and support from government, industry, and community.