California's Cap-and-Invest auction proceeds have a new destination. Through California Climate Investments, the state has routed funding to CalRecycle, which has then routed it to the California Alliance for Community Composting (CACC). CACC is now administering the fifth cycle of the Community Composting for Green Spaces program, shortened to CCG-5. The cycle runs from May 2026 through April 2028.

For city staff and compliance officers, that funding chain is the relevant context. The dollars in CCG-5 are the same dollars line-itemed in your jurisdiction's California Climate Investments reporting. CACC has launched 217 community compost sites across the state over the past five years and continues that work in seven regions, including the Coachella Valley and Inland Empire.

CCG-5 is not a grant

This is the first thing to know. Selected participants do not receive grant funds. They receive direct support from CACC in the form of technical assistance, training, infrastructure, equipment, and non-employee wages paid monthly through a business-to-business service agreement. The financial mechanism is procurement-style rather than pass-through funding, which changes how a jurisdiction or organization evaluates CCG-5 within its grant pipeline. Personnel time is valued at $33 per hour, including base wages and fringe benefits.

In exchange for support, participants commit to program objectives, allow public access to their sites, report metrics to CalRecycle, and present at an Impact Report Symposium in February 2028.

Who CCG-5 serves

The program supports community groups operating small-scale composting in historically underserved communities, defined by CalEnviroScreen 4.0. Jurisdictions that want to verify whether a specific service area qualifies can use the California Air Resources Board's Priority Populations 4.0 mapping tool.

The eligible applicant entity types are:

For a city or county evaluating CCG-5, the practical first step is to identify a candidate site in a CalEnviroScreen 4.0 priority population and assess whether existing community partners could operate it. CACC and PP&C can both help with that assessment.

Why is this cycle different from earlier ones

CCG-5 is explicitly designed to help community composters leverage two recent California laws. SB 279 expands the legal pathway for community composting operations. AB 2346 establishes a procurement obligation for jurisdictions to purchase locally produced compost. Read together, those two laws turn community compost hubs into a procurement-eligible compost supply that cities can count toward SB 1383 obligations. CACC will assist groups that want to establish Direct Service Provider agreements with jurisdictions, the contractual structure that connects a community compost site to a city's procurement reporting.

Demand for community-scale compost has consistently exceeded supply, according to CACC. CCG-5 is the program designed to close that gap, and it is the first cycle to arrive with procurement law strong enough to count community-scale supply as compliance infrastructure. That is what the Cap-and-Invest dollars are buying.

What this means for the next two years

217 existing sites, two new laws activating procurement pathways, and a two-year cycle of state-funded technical assistance arriving simultaneously is a different operating environment than community composting has had at any point in California's SB 1383 era. The previous cycles built the network. CCG-5 is the cycle in which the network tests whether community-scale compost can function as procurement-eligible infrastructure. Jurisdictions that establish Direct Service Provider relationships during this cycle will be the first to know whether the model works for SB 1383 compliance. Jurisdictions that wait until 2028 will be evaluating the answer rather than shaping it.

The timeline

PP&C is preparing the Coachella Valley and Inland Empire regional application

Prema's Permaculture & Composting operates a backyard composting site in Palm Springs that has processed 82,000 pounds of organic material over two years and produced 33 cubic yards of finished soil. The site supports 27 raised beds and 30 fruit trees as part of the Urban Farm. We want to scale that model through CCG-5 across the Coachella Valley and Inland Empire.

A Letter of Interest is a one to two-page submission that signals intent and includes a basic project description. CACC uses Letters of Interest to determine which projects to invite into the full application.

If you have a site, community, or project that might be a good fit, you can contact us to join the regional application. You can also submit your own Letter of Interest directly to CACC. Either path works.

The May 31 priority date is internal to PP&C. It allows time to coach Letter of Interest submissions before the CACC deadline on June 21.

Contact: [email protected] or (714) 394-6944

Learn more

This issue has covered the elements of CCG-5 most relevant to California city staff, compliance officers, and community composting operators. The full program description, eligible costs, and application requirements are on CACC's website. Anyone considering an application should review the source directly.

CACC's program page: thecacc.org/projects

For a look at what community composting operations can look like in practice, PBS SoCal's Earth Focus profiled LA Compost in "The Community That Transforms Food Scraps Together, Stays Together."

All program information in this issue is sourced from CACC's website and publicly available program presentations.

Turning Food Scraps into Soil, Jobs, and Community Wealth.

Prema Walker

The Compost Capitalist

Founder, Prema's Permaculture & Composting

LinkedIn | Instagram