"Collective Action for the Climate through Composting", Discussion with Nettle Curbside Composting
About Nettle Curbside Compost: Worker Owner Cooperative
Nettle Curbside Compost is a worker-owned curbside composting company serving the Stateline area. They provide food scrap pick-up service for residential and commercial customers, low-cost compost drop-off locations, and event composting. Nettle believes in environmental justice, the power of collective action, and renewal of the soil. Composting has many benefits, including helping slow climate change.
About Jessie Crow Mermel
Jessie Crow Mermel is a community weaver, environmental educator, and a dedicated tender of the land. Jessie is passionate about cultivating shared experiences of wonder. Her dream is to midwife the re-storying of our relationships to the land, each other, and the more-than-human world. Jessie is a Field Representative with Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves, a Worker-Owner with Nettle Curbside Compost, and a Board Member at Nature at the Confluence. She also leads women’s circles, land restoration, rewilding programs, retreats, and wonder walks. Her family has roots near Växjö, Sweden, the greenest city in Europe. She visited Sweden with her family in 2019 and was deeply inspired by the country’s commitment to the environment, from composting and community gardens, sustainable transportation, and green energy.
Jessie finds her bliss being in nature—especially paddling and backpacking, through making art, growing plants and community, being cozy with a book or a journal, and, of course, composting for a better world.