Food Recovery & Onsite Composting in Schools & Institutions

This episode corresponds to Lesson 3 of our online course.

In this ninth episode, we examine a food recovery school program in Oakland, USA, with program director Kelly Ernstfriedman and an onsite composting program in Ioannina University, Greece, with Prof. Georgios Pilidis, in order to get a vision of how a 360 solution can work in schools and other institutions.

Thank you to Big Hanna Composter for making this episode possible.

The original since 1991, and now installed in more than 25 countries, Big Hanna’s five standard models of on-site in-vessel composters range from 75 to 2400 kg of food waste per week, for housing areas, prison, schools, canteens and restaurants. For more information, visit www.bighanna.com

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TRANSCRIPT

 

Kelly ErnstFriedman:

EM: Let’s just start I suppose with a little background information – you started the Food for Kids program back in May 2013, yeah?

KE: We did, we did. We were approached by Nancy Deming, who works for – she’s a consultant for the Oakland Unified School District, and she works for a program called Green Gloves, which is all about greening the Oakland school system. And she had been seeing a lot of the waste that’s been going on – she works on various initiatives in the schools, including a sorting program, which is the basis for our food donation program. Instead of everything going to the landfill, she’s working on getting the schools to sort their trash at lunch. And then they have something called a Food Share, which is basically, the kids – especially at the elementary and middle-school age, where their bellies are a little smaller and they’re required to take a certain amount of food and they often don’t eat it. So the Food Share bin gives them a chance to put that in there and if someone else decides “hey, I want another milk” then they can take that during the cafeteria period. But then after that cafeteria period, that food goes into the landfill, or the compost.

And so Nancy really wanted to connect with someone who could take that food and then donate it. Thanks to the Bill Emerson Food Recovery Act, which was passed in the U.S. In 1996, organisations are encouraged to donate food. It’s sort of a liability coverage that says that unless there’s gross negligence, non-profits can take this food, or businesses can donate this food and get it out to people that are hungry. So, we kind of had the legislation there behind us, we just needed to figure out a system that worked for Oakland. And we started our pilot in May 2013 with two schools – two elementary schools – and we recovered over three thousand pounds of food, and worked with about thirty families just in about six weeks.

EM: That’s great. And how much would you recover now per month, say?

KE: We…total, we’ve gotten about, I think forty-five hundred pounds of food in the last six months. And we average probably thirty to fifty pounds a week. One of the schools that we’re going to be starting in the next couple of weeks – we did a survey and they had fifty-five pounds of food from one day of lunch.

EM: That’s a lot of food.

KE: It is. It is (laughs).

EM: And does it all get distributed then?

KE: Yeah, all of the poundage that we note – all of that gets distributed.

EM: That’s very good. And to touch on the regulations again, is it primarily the regulations that are preventing schools and other public places from distributing food?

KE: It is, it is. Because the food comes from the Government, there’s very strict rules on what can and can’t go back to the kitchen, and that’s been another part of the program as well, sort of educating the kitchen managers and staff about what can be returned. So for example, if they have apples or pears that go out and go into the Food Share; if those are in pretty good shape, and the kitchen manager has the opportunity to make the call and say “you know what, I think I can use these again tomorrow, or the next day, they’re going to hold up”, they can take those back into the kitchen, clean them off and re-serve them. Anything that hasn’t had a, kind of, heat differential, that can go back in and be re-used.

But anything that has had some kind of temperature change – we see a lot of cartons of milk, for example – some of our schools are satellite cooking kitchens, which means packaged food comes in that gets heated up, so they’ll have a plastic wrapped piece of pizza, or a burrito, or a baked potato with cheese and broccoli – anything like that would have to go into the trash before we came along. But now that we’re here, then immediately after the period, that goes back into refrigeration or the freezer, depending on the site – and then that is distributed either to the students and their families during a distribution period at the school, or it’s connected with a community partner: a soup kitchen, a church – some organisation doing food assistance – and is given back to the community.

EM: Right, okay. And do the schools that you work with compost their waste already, or is that something that hasn’t been done yet?

KE: Yes. That’s actually a great first step to setting up a type of food recovery program, because you want to make sure you’re getting the food – you don’t want to have to actually, you know, go through the bin and do a dumpster dive type exercise where you’re cleaning things off. So having a sorting system that includes compost and includes a food share is absolutely essential. And that’s the first step in how we choose the schools that we’re expanding to is do they already have a Green Gloves in place, or can we get a sorting system up and moving relatively quickly so we can begin the food recovery.

Because that’s just…that takes a little bit of onus off the process when that’s already done, and you can say “okay, here’s the box of food that gets donated – great, that’s done, that’s neatly packaged – let’s hand that off to the parents,” or “let’s hand that off to the community organisation”. So definitely, I think composting and sorting is vital.

EM: Excellent, so they work well together side-by-side?

KE: Yeah.

EM: And would you say that composting and the food recovery program are a good educational tool for students as well?

KE: We hope so. That’s actually, sort of, the next phase that we would like to work on is getting the education component in there, because we have hand outs and, you know, we talk to the parents and the kids. And that’s one of the feedback from one of our pilot schools, Brookfield, saying “this is really important, this is the message that we want to be sending our kids, is that food…you know, food is a resource, food isn’t something you take a bite of and you throw away and you really have to think about that”.

Thankfully, you know, because of Nancy’s work with the Green Gloves program and the sorting, the kids are already getting a sense of that. One thing that’s really fun to see when we do site visits is; we go in at lunch and you see these kids, especially the youngsters that come over, and they’re really looking at the bins and saying “okay, is this landfill? Is this compost? Is this food share?” And you just, kind of, see them working it out, and then they put something in the food share bin and we say thank you, and they just get this big smile on their faces. So, you know, it’s definitely a group effort and all of these different things working together – the teachers as well have been very supportive of the program, and you know, they want to see the kids getting more nutrition and understanding about food and the food system, so

EM: Yeah, well that’s never a bad thing. And I know you’ve been running this in schools, but could you see this type of program running well in a university, say, or other types of spaces, like maybe restaurants, for example?

KE: I think that, not necessarily this program, but there is potential for other programs to work. In the United States, we have a lot of really exciting initiatives going on: there’s the Food Recovery Network, and Food Recovery Network is all about creating student-run food recovery networks in universities. And they have, I want to say over twenty or thirty schools that are participating, and then they had another sixty requests from students that want to start a program. There’s also really great restaurant initiatives that are going on. Out of Austin Texas there is Go Halfsies, which is a group that’s working with restaurants to help them offer smaller portion sizes. So they would have a meal, it would be half the size and the difference in price would be donated towards a hunger relief organisation. You know, there’s all different kinds of ways that businesses can get involved, really specific to what their business is. Restaurants have a great opportunity to donate food and to create compost programs. Schools, especially, you know, large universities with multiple cafeterias – there’s a huge opportunity there to divert waste, and also to get students involved in the process, which I think is really important as well.

EM: Yes, definitely. And for those listening in who might be interested in setting up a similar initiative – could you maybe give a bit of general advice or share some insights into how best to go about setting up a program like this?

KE: I think the biggest thing, you know, regardless of what country or what school district you’re in, is really working with the school and working with the parents and the staff. Because with any new program, to make it work you have to make sure it works with what’s already going on. Particularly with a resource-strapped staff, you don’t want to come in and say “here, we’re going to give you a whole bunch of new tasks”, you know. So, talking with them about the problem of food waste, and then figuring out a way that’s going to work best for them. Some schools are going to need to do distribution twice a week, some are going to need to do daily. You know, looking at the amount of surplus you have is a great way to start: doing some kind of survey with the kitchen management – just to look at okay, “how much milk are we getting in? How much extra food do we have?” And really working with each site and making it very site-specific. There’s not, sort of, a once-size-fits-all. There’s definitely steps you want to take in terms of talking with the schools and finding parent volunteers, or if you don’t have a strong parent volunteer group, which several of our schools don’t, you can partner with another community organisation. We have several schools that are going to start – they’re going to be working with community partners (churches and soup kitchens) that are going to come and pick up that food every day. So, it’s a much smaller ask for the community, but we’re still recovering that food, we’re still getting that food to people that are in need.

EM: Yeah, which is the most important thing. And what’s the future vision for food shift then?

KE: The large vision for Food Shift is that we can create a fee-for-service food recovery network. We believe that food recovery should be compensated in the same way that waste management is. In the same way that we pay for people to pick up our trash, our recycling, food recovery should be valued in the same way. It’s difficult with school districts because they’re so resource-strapped, but what we see, sort of the larger vision, would be policy changes around food recovery. So, you know, cities and municipalities, and maybe even the federal government would eventually put money behind this and say “yes, this is important, we’re going to pay for this service”. So not necessarily the schools themselves, and it’s not going to be, you know, it’s not a get rich quick kind of thing, but ideally yes, that that would be compensated. But that’s a much further down the line vision.

 

EM: That was Kelly Ernstfriedman, program director of the Food for Kids program, with some great insights and advice on running a food recovery program in a school setting. We go into detail about potential models for edible food recovery in lesson 3 of our online course, and list the key steps on how to get started.

And while our next guest doesn’t work directly with a food recovery program, he does have great experience with onsite composting in a University campus. Professor George Pilidis is a member of the Biological Applications and Technology department of the Ionannina University in Greece. Ioannina University is the first to start composting its waste in Greece and Prof Pilidis has been monitoring the composting program’s performance very carefully, so we’ll get into a little bit of detail on how it all works, and any issues they had along the way.

 

Prof. Georgios Pilidis:

EM: So Georgios, Ioannina is the fourth biggest university in Greece, I’ve heard you started recycling back in 2008, but when did you start composting organics?

GP: So I have to say, we have started earlier. Fifteen years ago, we had started to recycle our laboratory waste. This was the first step, and a very important one, because we were the first university [to do it] in Greece. We have started for the management of the solid waste in 2009, and the composting system was part of the solid waste management within the university campus; where we have approximately twelve thousand students – undergraduate students – plus two thousand post graduate students, so in total, fifteen-thousand people are living in this area.

EM: Okay, you must have quite a few restaurants and canteens then?

GP: We have two restaurants and we have fourteen canteens.

EM: So yeah, that’s quite a lot.

GP: Yes. (laughs).

EM: I imagine that’s lot of food waste too, then?

GP: Yes, we have approximately one hundred kilograms food waste per day.

EM: Right and how much compost does that make in the end?

GP:  So, according to our studies, fifty percent of the carbon is released in form of carbon dioxide, while the other fifty percent is being converted into a first-class compost. This means we have approximately fifty kilograms of compost per day.

EM: Okay, and how do you manage the compost then, do you sell it?

GP: So, this compost is used mainly by the gardeners of the university, and for this reason we do not have any chemical fertilisers within the campus. As well as, it’s used by people which are working in the university.

EM: Well, that’s a great use of compost.

GP: Yes.

EM: And you were the first university in Greece to start composting?

GP: Mh-hm, exactly.

EM: Yeah, how did the students react, did you have a lot of education to do beforehand?

GP: Yes, the students reacted very positively. We have located this composter directly under the student restaurant, in the basement – it’s an open-air basement of course – and we have also bought an air filter, therefore we do not have any bad smell. The only smell which is coming out is during the maturation process, which is taking place outside of the composter. And we use this composting unit also for didactical issues: many schools are coming here and visiting this composting unit, children, and….this educational process is excellent.

EM: That’s great. Yeah, the educational opportunity, I guess, is a good reason to have a composting unit in a school and university…

GP: Yes.

EM: And can you tell us a little bit about the composter itself?

GP: The composter is a big one – a closed system – the dimensions are approximately five meters long, and two meters in the height, and capacity is four cubic meters, the cylindrical capacity, and this composter is able to treat between four hundred kilograms and one thousand, two hundred kilograms food waste per week. We have approximately six hundred to seven hundred, so we manage this very well.

EM: That’s great. And it’s important to pick the right equipment for your specific needs – what was important in your decision, then, when it came to choosing a unit?

GP: The first and important thing is the material where this composting unit is made. The stainless steel, for example, the quality of the stainless steel is very, very important. And also, of course, the mechanical part, because our composter unit has temperature sensors automatically we have also aeration, and rotation of the drum [it all works] automatically, and this electronics should work very well. But the most important for me is the frame of the composting unit, and the material which is used.

EM: Right, and how do you handle contamination in the input stream of your composting unit?

GP: We are very happy because only one person is responsible for that from the university restaurant. And this person collects the waste, and we made recommendations to him, what kind of food waste he should [put] in the composting unit, and he’s very careful of course. The input is very important: you should avoid to have foreign subjects, for example glass or plastics or stones, or something like that.

EM: Yeah, it sounds like it’s a well controlled system – and this composting program was a pilot program to see if it could work elsewhere, is that correct?

GP: Mh-hm. The pilot program works very well, and Greece as [a] country is really far away from a good system for solid waste management. It’s the biggest environmental problem in Greece at the moment, and we thought that the university should play a pioneering work on that, and we made this, I think, [unclear] with success, due to the fact that we are going in many symposiums and national conferences, and we are presenting this…I think we’re well-known, at least in Greece at the moment.

And at the moment, as far as I know, the municipality of Ioannina is going to buy also such types of composters in order to place them in different places of the city: Ioannina is the seventh-biggest city in Greece with approximately one-hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants. And they’re going to place five or six such composters in places close to restaurants. I do not know exactly the plan, but they’re going to buy five or six composters like this.

EM: That’s great to see it expanding. And permits and regulations apply in most countries and can be quite strict – what’s the situation in Greece and did you have any issues?

GP: No, the Greek government has not any regulations on the quality of compost or the operation of composting units, but there is the European Compost Net, and they set some quality criteria. But according to my opinion, this criteria should be expanded also to organic compounds, not only to heavy metals and xenobiotics or foreign subjects etcetera, or microorganisms, they should also focus on organic compounds and this has been not done. And in order to be a member of this Compost Net, you have to produce a compost which has the regulation which was set up by this Compost Net. But these regulations, according to my opinion [are] very high – for example if you say, for lead for example, it’s approximately one hundred milligrams per kilogram and this is too much.

EM: That’s too much?

GP: Yes, it’s too much for me, or for nickel, it’s twenty-five milligrams per kilogram, this is also too much. They should be more stronger.

EM: Okay interesting, and compost quality standards is an important and quite serious subject that unfortunately we don’t have time to get into right now since we’re running out of time, but George just to finish up – do you have any final words on the success of the composting program or?

GP: No no, we’re very happy to have this composting unit here. We’re very happy that we’re the first university which is using this solid waste management system within the campus. And, of course, many people are coming and visiting us, and I’m going everywhere and giving lectures on that, and I’m very happy.

EM: Well that’s great, that’s great news. Thanks for talking to us today, Georgios.

GP: Okay, thank you very much.

EM: Okay all the best.

GP: Okay, bye.

Madagascar: Soil Fertility on a Shoestring Budget

This episode corresponds to Lesson 1 of our online course.

In this seventh episode, we talk to Master Composter Peter Ash about how he successfully  tackled deforestation and soil erosion in a small village in Madagascar, with hardly any funds or manpower. Peter demonstrates how understanding natural systems and using nature to our advantage can dramatically improve the health of the environment.

Thank you to BiobiN for making this episode possible.

BiobiN® is a mobile, on-site organic/wet material management solution that starts the composting process and effectively manages odour from putrescible waste. BiobiN® can be used in a variety of outlets, including food manufacturing, restaurants, shopping centres, supermarkets…it’s endless. Whereever organic or wet materials are generated, BiobiN® is THE solution

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TRANSCRIPT:

EM: So Peter you just came back from a two-month trip to Madagascar. How did that come about?

PA: I was hired a year ago when I was in France and I was teaching some gardening and composting classes, and…. So anyway, I was approached by this Frenchman and he told me about…that he has this, not much financial backing but a small NGO in France and they were doing work in Madagascar; in kind of the north-west area of Madagascar, the dryer side of the island, in a fairly remote area. Very poor: no running water, no electricity. And they’d basically built a small village where they had a school for little children. And then they also had some high-school students that were coming from further away, and they were trying to gain some food security, and they were just having a lot of difficulty.

EM: Right, and they sent you there to help them out. What were the main troubles they were having?

PA: So, what I’d discovered was: first of all, that side of the island had been deforested probably two hundred years or more ago. The cattle are a very import part of their diet, and a very important part of their culture, and so what they were doing was that they were burning the range right before the rainy season to burn off all the weedy vines, and the small weedy palm trees…. They’re burning it all off to create new grasses for the cattle. Well anyway, so I get there and I see this deforestation, I see this slash-and-burn, and terrible soil erosion – so I immediately saw, okay, we got to deal with erosion control, we got to deal with soil fertility, and we need to capture the water.

EM: Right. And regarding food: you told me that they were trying to grow rice, and I imagine that was quite a problem?

PA: Yeah, the property – there was no really low-level land for rice farming. Rice farming has to be done – when you’re dry farming it you need to have flat land and you need to be down in the low valleys, in the natural run-off areas, and we didn’t have any terrain like that at this village. We were on kind of a sandstone bluff, and then it would drop down to what would turn into a streambed when it rained, and then we had another hill going up the other side. So – and very few trees – a few palm trees here and there, a few mango trees here and there…you know, mostly everything had been burned off in the past.

EM: Right, and how were they for water generally then?

PA: Basically, when I got to the village they had two wells – hand-dug wells – and it was, they were very shallow. And they had planted some trees, maybe a year at the most earlier, and they were having to hand-water the trees to keep them alive during the dry season. And in one day of watering, they could take the well all the way to the bottom.

EM: That’s quite a dire situation.

PA: Yeah…

EM: Can you list, then, the key things you decided to do to help?

PA: Right…I knew we had to do some earthworks to capture the water, and replanting trees to help hold water in the soil, digging berms and swales to help hold the water and recharge the water table…and then soil fertility.

EM: Right, and there were some big challenges when it came to improving soil fertility, wasn’t there?

PA: Yeah, so I’ll tell you what – here’s what happened was…it turned out that the students that were there – the high-school students that I was supposed to be teaching compost to – were mainly not available. Initially we did make a couple compost piles and…but it was too labour intensive. So, what we found was we had…we had about twenty-head of cattle and a couple goats. Some were owned by the village itself but most of them were owned by neighbours, but they were penned on our property.

And, you know, one taboo I discovered was that we could do no, like, compost toilets or humanure composting. That was completely taboo, but to work with the cow dung and the cattle manure – that was not a problem. And they didn’t know anything about using it. And so here was this cattle pen – quite a bit of manure had built-up in it, and I discovered that we had a nearby sawmill that had mountains of wood shavings and sawdust that was a waste, and they didn’t know what to do with it. So we could get that for free, just by sending some men in an ox-cart over and…. And then there was another nearby village where they grew a lot of sugarcane and they had some low ground and some flat ground, and so there was all this sugarcane waste.

So what we decided was that: due to lack of labour and equipment, that we would just spread the woodchips and saw dust and the sugarcane waste in the cattle pen, and then allow the cattle to just trod on it for a month or so – three weeks to a month – and then we just scrape it all out and use it as mulch. And we could turn it into the soil for kitchen gardens…and so on. And so, we let that be one of the major key components for our soil fertility program, rather than manually making compost and having to turn it, and adding more water and so on.

And then, on top of using the cattle to make compost for us, a lot of people have pigs as well and most of the animals just run free and the range is open-range for everyone to use. But then, we built what we call a pig tractor, which is like a portable pigpen. So we had the pig tractor with just three little piglets in it. Of course, the pigs are being fed, but we also just threw a lot of organic material inside  – the same wood shavings and the sugarcane mulch, and then weeds from the garden, we’d just throw it in there – if they pigs didn’t eat it, no problem: they would just basically compost it for us.

And then, when we first built the pig tractor – right next to it, just about the same size, we planted some cover crop. So as soon as the cover crop began to flower…all these nitrogen-fixing plants have, you know, captured atmospheric nitrogen, fixed it on their root systems. So as soon as it flowers, that’s basically when the plant stops growing and starts fruiting. And that’s when it uses that nitrogen. So if you cut it at that point, then all the nitrogen – these little nodules that are fixed in the soil on its root system – remain in the soil. So then what we did was we just moved the pig tractor over and set it on top of that cover crop and the pigs just devoured it in no time. But then, they’d left all that nitrogen in the soil already.

EM: Amazing, that’s a very effective way of getting around the problem of not being able to compost!

PA: Yes, indeed it is. And then, you know, as far as the reforestation: we looked around and we searched out local trees and seedlings…like, they have some moringa, which you can plant just from a cutting, and then there was a couple other trees – some of the acacia, that the leaf can be used as fodder. And, you know, of course the acacia will also provide shade and it’s a nitrogen-fixing tree – the same as the moringa. So, we planted trees on the swales, on the berms, using the swales to capture the water to water them.

So a lot of what we did around our tree plantings was…some woodier plants and trees which were more or less weeds to us – they weren’t fodder for animals, they weren’t nitrogen-fixers, they weren’t food for humans – so those trees, we didn’t cut them down completely but we coppiced them heavily so that we could chop off the branches, lay it out as mulch on the ground, and then allow the tree to grow back out so we could come back and coppice again. And as the trees that we planted grew up larger, we kept creating a larger mulched area around the tree to hold water, to create soil, to create the environment for the microbiology to be active….

And then we started our own nursery from seeds. And I’d brought a bunch of seeds with me, various seeds of fruit trees and nitrogen-fixing trees that would work in Madagascar. And then, because we had access to bamboo – some big stems, you know: bamboo that was several inches wide at the base – and so we cut tubes that were, you know, open at both ends and we used that. We put good soil inside, and then we planted tree seeds in those, so when the seeds spouted, then the roots could only drop straight down, it couldn’t spread out. And then as soon as the seed was up about four inches or so, then we took the whole bamboo tube and we planted the seedling in the tube, in the berms. So that as the swale would soak up water, you know, the root would just drop right down through the bottom of the bamboo and get a really good, deep start. And so before I left, we planted probable sixty – sixty or eighty trees that we’d started in these bamboo tubes. Basically, we had to use just what nature was offering us. Like, we couldn’t even buy, like, plastic pots, we couldn’t even buy, like, a plastic tube, you know, to start a seed in. So the bamboo worked great like that, you know, in a years time or two years time, you know, with most of the bamboo in the soil, it’s going to rot and just be fungal food for the root system, which is great.

EM: Right, so it’s all about using nature to your advantage then?

PA: Yeah, absolutely you know, and we’re really looking at, you know…. Any permaculture design is going to begin with just getting a good assessment, you know, and talking with the people – asking them what do they want. You know, “what is it that you want?” you know? And they needed more food, they needed more fresh water, and so that’s what we concentrated on.

And then, you know, anything you plant – if you can get some compost into the soil, if you can get any kind of organic material into the soil…because we know that in natural systems, plants don’t need fertiliser, they don’t need pesticides if the system is healthy. And with a basic understanding of how plants function, and, you know, the relationship of the microbiology in the soil…when we have a basic understanding of that, we realise that early-successional plants have a very highly bacterial-dominated soil food-web because early-successional plants are annual plants – they’re soft, green tissue plants. And what decomposes soft green tissue is bacteria.

And then when we get to the end of plant-succession, when we get to old growth forests and, you know, hundreds of year old trees or thousands of year old trees – we see that we have a very fungal dominated soil food-web. And so, if you’re growing trees, then you need more fungi in the soil, and if you’re growing perennial plants – you know, shrubs and things – then you need that balance of bacteria and fungi.

And so, that’s what we were trying to teach our local farmers and the villagers there, was that: around our trees we got to get a lot of woody material and mulch, and just keep mulching. Nature mulches herself, you know, she’s dropping leaves, she’s dropping fruit…. Man, you know, when we understand that – we can build compost piles and make humus in a very short period of time. But actively composting was something we just didn’t have the equipment and the manpower for – so just, laying on layer upon layer upon layer of mulch…

EM: Yeah, and it’s absolutely amazing what you got done there in such a short time.

PA: You know, I was actually really amazed by how much we accomplished in a two-month period with myself and a couple volunteers and then, on average, ten labourors. You know, we established a tree nursery, we dug some key berms and swales, and then only then, you know, when the heavy rains came consistently and the swales remained full, that then when they reached a high level, they could run off slowly into the natural drainage system.

What we didn’t have time for on my first trip was to really work the stream bed itself with constructing gabions to slow water down and not just run right off to the rivers, and then out to the ocean. So, we feel that, you know, we should be able to have that stream running year-round in seven years, with proper earthworks.

EM: That’s incredible. And how did the locals react to all of this?

PA: Well, I think they were very excited. Especially I think some of the older men were very excited about what they were learning, and what we were doing because in two month’s time you can start to see the changes. And, you know, when they saw that “my gosh, we’re holding some water here. This water would have just run away but now it’s still sitting here two days after that last rain!” You know…

EM: Yeah, yeah. Well it must be very exciting to see it all working out.

PA: Yeah, yeah. So, I’m looking forward to going back, you know, maybe at the end of the rainy season, or like halfway through into the dry season to see what more we can do with just mulching and….

EM: Great stuff Peter, you’ll have to keep us informed about how you’re getting on!

PA: Certainly.

Composting in the Biotech Industry: Case Study

This episode corresponds to Lesson 6 of our online course.

In this sixth episode, Head of Composting at Novozymes Frank Franciosi gives us an in-depth view of the operations at his compost production facility in North Carolina (USA). He shares with us his thoughts on marketing compost correctly and his strategies for setting up a successful facility. 

Interview by Eleen Murphy

Thank you to Green White Space for making this possible.

Green White Space is a not-for-profit enterprise specialising in media and social innovation. Find out more on their website.

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TRANSCRIPT:

EM: So Frank, could you tell

FF: Yeah, I actually got into this business, didn’t know anything about composting, and had answered an ad in a paper to manage a composting facility in North Carolina. At the time I knew nothing about what composting was all about, other than the normal, basic biology and science behind it. And I got involved with the US Composting Council, which was a good resource for me: I met a lot of people, visited some sites, and really learned how to do it on a commercial scale.

And I started this facility, then got out of that facility – worked there for about four or five years – and started another facility, which is working with Novozymes. At the time, they were looking for alternatives for their residuals coming out of that plant. It was an alternative for them. Traditionally I lot of the biotech industries do a lot of land application of their residuals and put it on to farm land – which is, you know, the cheapest way to do it. However, what has happened is a lot of the area is starting to get more urban, so we’re losing that farmland; so this was another way of actually looking at more of a sustainable approach for the residuals long-term.

EM: And how much residuals do you take from Novozymes itself?

FF: we take about thirty-five to fourty percent of the residuals coming out of the process – the plant in Franklington which is just North of Raleigh, North Carolina.

EM: Right, and how much do you produce then?

FF: We produce about thirty-five thousand cubic yards a year of finished product.

EM: Right, and how much is that in tonnes?

FF: It’s roughly about half, because it weighs about a thousand pounds per cubic yard – a thousand pounds a cubic yard is kind of the number that we always use.

EM: Cool and tell me a little bit about the facility itself: the location, the size…that kind of thing.

FF: Yeah, the facility itself sits on an eight-acre site. We have about five hundred acres and we’re smack in the middle of that parcel so we’re surrounded by wooded area. It’s very much a rural area, so we don’t have issues with, you know, neighbourhoods encroaching on us because we own the land all round it (laughs).

EM: Sounds ideal for what you’re doing then.

FF: Yeah.

EM: Could you talk us through, then, the general process of composting at your site and the equipment that you use?

FF: We have, you know, we start off with the front-end loaders. They’re our measuring cups (laughs), okay. And then we have a big mixer just like you mix when you’re baking a cake. It is a Kuhn Knight – it holds about thirty-five cubic yards. It’s a commercial, industrial mixer so this is a rotating reel and it’s got augers in it that are against it, so… And then there’s a conveyor belt that comes off that mixer. We have a truck that parks underneath they conveyor belt, and the conveyor belt conveys the mixed material into the back of the dump truck and then he takes it out to form the windrow.

And then the windrow, you know, they’re about twelve feet wide and about six feet high. The turner – it’s a Backhus, a German turner – and we turn based on meeting our pathogen reduction: basically one time a week, or once every five days. And then taking temperature measurements every seventy-five feet, and we do that with a manual probe. And we use a compost manager system that’s developed from Green Mountain Technologies so we can datalog that back into our PC, so we can track the temperatures.

So after sixty/sixty-five days we’ll pull that windrow up and we’ll feed it to a screener. We have a Backers star screen, it’s a rubber star screen, so all the fine material falls in between the stars, and all the large runs up. The oversize, as we call it, we take that and it goes back into the front-end of the process. And then the fines, we can screen to whatever particle size we want based on our sales demands and what our inventory is. And then we’ll stockpile that material and we’ll let it cure for another sixty days. So most of our materials are at least one hundred and twenty days old before we sell it, depending on the season: our Spring – we have a big Spring sale season which starts in March and May and then it dies down in the middle of the summer months as it gets really hot here – then it picks up again in the Fall. So we have, like, pretty much a six-month sale season, that’s pretty robust.

EM: That’s great.

FF: Yeah.

EM: So, is most of the materials you take from Novozymes or is there any other places you take them from?

FF: There’s a wood-moulding manufacturer that we take the sawdust from. And then there’s five different municipalities in the area and they bring us yard waste. And so, we have to grind that, some of it comes in pre-ground and some of it we have to grind, so we have a horizontal Rotochopper grinder and we’ll grind that down into three inch minus material. And we sell everything bulk, we don’t bag anything. So everything goes out in large tractor-trailer loads.

EM: Cool, and to give us an idea of how it sells – what are the markets that you sell to, are there many?

FF: So, you know, the traditional markets that we sell into are the landscape construction, or landscape installation, markets. We also sell it to the nursery market, and we do sell it to some golf – the golf industry. And then the new area that we’re in is…it’s called Green Infrastructure, I don’t know if you’ve…it’s also called Low Impact Development, and there’s some new rules and regulations that, you know, if you build a building now you have to estimate how much storm water flow you’re going to have – and you have to catch that one-inch rain event. So we’re starting to sell compost into those markets, because compost is very…it has a high absorption rate, it’ll hold a lot of water, it’s basically a natural fertiliser and it’s a great growing media. So there are several areas where compost is being used – green roofs is one of them. You’ve heard of rain gardens or bioretention basins, green swells…. And these are all different applications within that Green Infrastructure category. So that’s happening here in the US.

And then, more and more we’re seeing compost being incorporated into the soil, so there’s a better percolation, a better infiltration rate into the soil – and that’s a whole new market, we’re just kind of scratching the surface. And then another market is erosion control: which is preventing the sediment from running off on construction sites, and that has been a huge market for us just in the recent years.

We’re just starting to sell a little more into agriculture; agriculture believe it or not is not a big market for us, but more and more people are seeing the value of using compost. And then there’s a big push here in the US to grow local, buy local. So we’re seeing more smaller farms, and people are now more interested in keeping their farms, but growing organic and being able to provide that to a farmer’s market rather than a grocery store.

EM: That’s amazing yeah, that’s very promising. And you have a number of different products for different uses – I presume it’s high-quality compost you’re selling?

FF: Yeah, we…you know, because our feedstock’s are very consistent, we get a very consistent product on the back-end. We don’t change our process – so that’s been a big part of us is keeping that quality control on the process side and then also on the finished product side.

And then we screen the different sizes. We screen really, really fine mesh – quarter-inch material – you know, very fine, and that goes to the golf course market, that goes to that green roof market. And then we screen a half-inch/three-eights inch product, which is pretty general purpose: it can be used in potting media, it could be used as a mix, it could be used directly into the garden as an additive. And then we screen really at a larger size, which is coarser, it has a lot more of the woody material in it, it’s got more mulch content in it – and that’s used for erosion control because that’ll hold the slopes, just like a mulch will hold and give you temporary stabilisation of that slope.

And then we do some mixes: a lot of people, they don’t realise the value of the word compost so they’re used to buying topsoil – and we don’t sell topsoil because that’s not sustainable. But we manufacture topsoil; so we take a portion of compost and we blend it in with some sand and some silt and some clays and we make what I call and engineered topsoil, and that’s a very popular product because when people say: “well, do you have topsoil?”, and I say: “no, we don’t have topsoil, but we have engineered topsoil”. And then they go “well, what’s engineered topsoil?” and it’s basically a topsoil that we create by blending other ingredients in with it.

And that’s been a huge market boom for us, because again people are more used to buying topsoil. But when they buy topsoil they buy weed seeds, they buy…I mean, who knows what’s been sprayed on the field…so it’s an unknown but, see, they think if it’s black it’s good, because if it’s dark then it’s rich. But when you look at the analysis of topsoil here in North Carolina, there’s really only one percent organic matter in the soil. And our compost has about sixty to seventy percent organic, so it’s very high in organic matter, which is really the secret to compost, is that: all in the organic matter, and the humus.

EM: Right, and why do you think that there’s so little understanding about compost then, in a general sense?

FF: So I think, you know, it’s all how it’s marketed. And a lot of compost is sold in the US not as compost, but as a soil supplement or as a topsoil, or you know, a manufactured topsoil – and that’s just the stigma that people just have to get over, over time, I think. One of the challenges that we have in the industry is to monetise the value of compost because if you took each and every one of those components and you started adding, not just the value of fertiliser value, but the cation-exchange capacity, organic matter, biological activity…but people don’t value that, they just look at NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium), they don’t look at the overall picture of soil health.

I think part of the problem is, you know, the commercialisation of fertilisers – the brand-naming of fertilisers – you know, “hey it’s Springtime, time to go out and get your spreader and….” well, you know, we don’t have that market appeal. We’re trying to work on people getting back to basics. One thing that the recession has done is that it has increased awareness of waste, so people aren’t wasting as much. The other thing is, people are now growing a lot of gardens themselves. So that’s been a big push for us: community gardens are growing all over the US, there’s a big push for urban gardens. You know, so I think it’s an awareness thing and I think we need to do a better job at educating the general public as well as school kids because if they learn it, eventually it’ll become common practice.

EM: Yeah, so get it into the school curriculum.

FF: That’s right.

EM: And do you know of any other businesses or companies that are composting their organic waste?

FF: I don’t know of any right off my hands that I could think of, but you know, that changes all the time. I know there’s some egg processors that are doing it here in North Carolina, there’s some tobacco companies that are looking into doing it with their stems – so there’s other industries, I don’t know if it’s just biotech per se. And a lot of it, I tell you, I’ll be honest with you: a lot of it, and it was a big bridge that I had to cross, was the big liability issue here. You know, “oh, what’s the liability, you know” and I think a lot of the corporate people say “well, that’s not our business, we’ll, you know we’ll just send it to a facility”.

So a lot of facilities are probably taking similar material like we’re generating and composting that material. There’s a plant not far from us that makes amino acids, and I know that they have a left over residual, and they’re taking that and they’re shipping it to a competitor of mine, and they’re composting it. So, directly setting up a facility on-site, I don’t think there’s a lot. But I think there’s a lot going to compost, but you just don’t know about it because they’re private contracts they’ve arranged.

EM: Yeah, well it’s good so long as they’re composting it!

FF: That’s right! Yeah, that’s right.

EM: So what do you think it takes to get started on a facility like your one?

FF: You know, it’s very much baby-steps. And I think the approach was: prove it on a small scale; figure out what your technology is. The obstacles that I look at are: of course, money is one (laughs). But you know, location is really important. We don’t really have an odor problem, but you know, when you’re handling stuff like food waste and some of the other materials…if you’re handling manures and there’s dairy farms all around you – there’s not an odor problem (laughs). But if you’re handling dairy manure or food waste and you’re surrounded by a housing development, then there’s an odor problem, right? So I think locations are important.

You want to be near a major road, but you don’t want to be right on the, you know, you want to be off the major road. You want to be in an area that’s pretty much you know what the growth around you is going to occur. Like, I know there’s facilities that have been around since the 1970’s and what is happened is that everyone sold the land around it, so now it’s all housing – well, now you have all these odor complaints. Well, it was there since the 1970’s, I mean….

Yeah, so location’s important and, you know, storage issues, seasonality – those are the big issues. And then, you know, how you plan your facility. You know, looking at the process flow and how materials come in, and you want to make it as linear as possible. Just like, you know, an auto-manufacturing line – the line’s straight. So you want to have an engineer to be able to figure that out, but you also want somebody that has knowledge in the industry.

It’s a lot of materials movement, so if you want to move something a short distance, you could move it with a loader. If you want to move it a little bit longer than that short distance, say…sixty/seventy feet, maybe it’s better to use conveyors or a truck, like a dump truck, or a conveyor and a truck.

And then, you know, your run-off: you want to make sure that if it’s an outdoor facility, that you’re capturing that run-off.  So contamination is also an issue. So those are the big things. And then, sizing your equipment for your facility, so like, you know it’s really better to start out with leasing equipment because the life expectancy of that equipment may be short: like a grinder that takes a lot of beating. So all those little things on figuring out what the movements are and how to increase your efficiency in those movements are really important.

EM: Amazing, great advice. And would you say that it’s economically viable for businesses to go down this road?

FF: Yeah, I think it is. You know, the model in the US is: a lot of composters make the majority of their money on the front-end which is tipping fees, not so much on the back-end. It may be eighty-twenty or sixty-forty. And I think that it could be a good business, but it all depends on what those…you’re competing against the landfill, so your fees have to be better than the landfill so you can bring that business in.

You want to try to get as clean feedstocks as possible, so contamination is an issue there because if you’re picking out a lot of trash and stuff, that’s just more processing time and more equipment. If you make a really good product on the back-end then you can recoup more of your profits on the back-end. So, you know, I think it can be. I know the other model is the AD model, and that works really well where you have high-density populations, small footprint, high tipping fees – so you can recoup some of that in the tipping fee, the energy generation, and then the final product.

What I worry about is there’s a lot of AD plants out there that…they consider everything but the final product, and you know, they’re saying “well we can sell it as a digestate”: in a lot of cases here in the US you can’t because you have to treat it for pathogens, you got odor issues, it’s not a mature product. So it’s more of a cost than it is a profit. So, I’d like to see that model work, where they take the digestate on the back-end and they compost the digestate too so they make another value added profit.

EM: Yeah, absolutely, that makes sense. And finally, is there any last words of advice that you’d like to give?

FF: I’m a believer that if the markets are there and the markets are steady and there’s a really good demand for the product, that we’ll see more facilities expand, we’ll see more facilities being permitted, because the economics working out – start working out a lot better, because you know. A lot of the composting that was done early in the US was mandatory state mandates on keeping yard waste out of the landfill, which was a smart thing to do because it’s useless in a landfill. But they didn’t have the infrastructure, they didn’t have the training and the technology to do it right, to make a product. And you see a lot of municipalities kind of getting out of the composting business, and you see a lot more private-public partnerships being developed. Because I think we understand it more as a manufacturing process – and that’s the attitude you have to take, which is “I’m not just keeping this stuff out of the landfill, I’m making a product”. And, you know, if you make a high quality product, obviously you can demand more price for your product.

EM: Great, great stuff. Frank, that’s all we have time for today, thanks for coming on.

FF: Alright, thank you Eleen.

Recycling Organics in the Middle East

This episode corresponds to Lesson 3 of our course.

In this fourth episode, Eleen Murphy focuses on the Middle East and interviews Daniel Mitroussidis from ITSA on managing organics in a business setting in this part of the world.

Thank you ESCAB for making this episode possible.

QuantorXL® Drum Composting is a turnkey system that achieves full hygienization. Manure, sludge and bio-waste can be composted and turned into a resource, recycling many important nutrients back to nature. QuantorXL® is approved by the Swedish board of agriculture and fulfills EU regulations.

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TRANSCRIPT:

EM: So Daniel, today we’re focusing on the Middle East and just specifically your project in Qatar. But before we get into that, maybe you can give us just a little background information. It seems that recycling is gaining traction in the Middle East, why do you think that is?

DM: It certainly is, I mean, organic waste is what smells and that attracts bacteria and disease. And when you got a prosperous nation like the UAE for example, you know, it’s growing. And the cost of land in using landfills or dumps is becoming very expensive and it can play a detrimental role to society, and just general health and living standards. So, what we try to do is to treat the organic waste on-site or in a collective method on a site next to, or within, the landfill or dump, therefore actually minimizing the organics that goes into the landfill or dump, which we think is a waste of resources, and turning it into compost.

EM: That’s a brilliant idea actually, that’s really cool. So they have a pressing need to recycling, I suppose. But what are the challenges you’ve seen to introducing recycling systems? I presume the notion of recycling is gaining popularity?

DM: It is, it is. There are elements and drivers, but the current practices there at the moment (and there are improvements to this) is that there’s little awareness campaigns (although this is improving), there’s very little source-separation activities, there’s minimal compost development. So, putting quality back into the soils is paramount, especially in a region that is purely desert. There’s in increase in migrant populations, so therefore, when they’re building infrastructure; roads, airports, shopping malls, there are more people producing more waste. So the economic growth in that area contributes to growth in waste generation per person. And if you look at the statistics in the Middle East, for example in the UAE or Qatar, per kg per person it’s on of the highest in the world.

EM: Wow, okay so there’s a lot of work to be done there. And you’ve been part of that work yourself in Qatar, in The Pearl which is a high-end residential and retail complex is that right?

DM: Yeah, the Pearl, which is run by UDC (the United Development Company), based in Qatar as you said, is a beautiful residential and retail complex. And people pay for prosperity, and do not want to see waste, and management are very pro-active and are always looking at ways to add value to the good work already done there.

We identified through our waste management audit, when we were asked to conduct that exercise, that there’s a huge need for landscaping, and maintaining beautiful grounds and floral settings. The Pearl imports everything –

EM: Yeah, just, because actually I remember you saying before, and I thought this was really, interesting, but they import the plants as well, do they?

DM: Yes. They’ve started to develop their own nurseries there but as you can appreciate with the weather, the extreme heat, it’s not always easy. And accessibility to good water, which is suitable for plants, is not always easy to ascertain as well. So, one of the things that we were able to do was, in example, with the workers camp there, they feed them 24/7. Their food is placed directly into the Biobin for on-site treatment. This is turned into compost, then placed onto the garden beds. So there’s less money spent on rubbish removal, importing soil conditioners and plants, and that means The Pearl can manage this themselves.

At the same time, we’ve been able to educate the kitchen staff in better practice of food waste management, and educate the staff in effective management practices in source separation methods as well.

EM: Alright, and was there any other habits that you observed that could be changed?

DM: Yeah, we found that a lot of the watering is done during the day. From an environmental perspective, it is a natural resource and it makes it very difficult when you’re watering in extreme temperatures during the day. That means the irrigation system isn’t working until it’s full at maximum, the plants are dying more readily because there isn’t conditioner in the soil, like a fetiliser. So we’ve been able to actually put the compost on there, therefore extending the lifespan of that plant, and less water required.

EM: Cool, so it saves water as well.

DM: Absolutely. It acts like a sunscreen.

EM: That’s really cool. And so did change happen in The Pearl and more generally, what do you think we can do to inspire influencers to change their systems?

DM: Well firstly, it’s about meeting people within the organisation, understanding their vision, their objectives and their values, and finding the like-minded people and objectives coming together. Secondly, the organisation has to have a strong commitment to environmental issues. And without sounding too cynical, there are many environmental policy statements on all organisations in any website or any other documented policy: it’s whether they actually act on it. And thirdly it’s to make environmental, commercial and social sense.

So, leadership is required and it starts at the top, and it’s about changing their behaviour, so if you improve the task, then you improve the process, and you improve the result, which ultimately improves the performance. So very, very quickly and not in any particular order: it’s about changing culture, and policy and procedures. Everyone works to a task and duty, so if you change that task and duty to make it more effective, more efficient, and more aligned to environmental practices, then you improve the results and the performance. Apart from education and training, you have to look at current plans in place for growth and development, so therefore it’s not just a gimmick; it’s part of everyday use. And with that everyday use, that becomes part of the culture of the organisation, and then that sends a powerful message across the rest of the organisation or the complex that it’s a standard that you’ve developed. And you never go back.

EM: Awesome. So, after the Qatar project – or you’re still involved in the Qatar project aren’t you?

DM: Yeah. We go as regular visitors there in Qatar, and we’ve ascertained new clients, and these are catering companies and food processing plants as well. Because what they do is, a large part of their business is producing food waste, and that food waste is something that we could put back into the ground. And at the moment what their doing is, they’re stopping their work, getting transport companies to pick up the bins and the skips, and they’re paying them to drive across the country to actually dump. We’re saying that you don’t need that. If you eliminate the unnecessary practices and develop new ones, you’d be surprised at the results you can achieve.

And in Qatar, especially for The Pearl, we’ve allowed them to enhance their landscaping services, for example, there’s cost savings in labour and products, there’s been training for staff, there’s efficiencies introduced in water usage, and greater yield of plant as I’ve discussed earlier. The dying plants don’t need to be disposed of; they can go into the Biobin. Planting is more effective and more efficient, in the sense that you’ve already got quality in the soils to work with. There’s less need and requirement for watering because of compost. And we’re able to demonstrate the sustainability loop.

So it’s been more of a win-win and a “win-win” as we’re there doing the work. The more we understand the client, the more we understand their current practices, we can actually introduce new methodologies based on their local circumstances, and therefore fit into their practices. And it’s actually worked in a wonderful way for mutual benefit.

EM: Brilliant. And how important, then, is understanding business culture, to making recycling a popular choice?

DM: It’s very important because decisions in business should be based on data and fact, especially in relation to waste and environmental…many businesses initially don’t know how things are spent. They have beautiful budgets, they have beautiful accounting and financial systems, but if you ask them to break down the frequency of the use and the spending habits, and asking “why”, it’s very, very different. So, business culture should be part of a process of imporvement – an improvement culture. As I said earlier it’s first to understand the problem and then make improvements.

If you have a methodology of measuring and reporting waste levels, this further promotes engagement. So, you’re using the standardised methodologies at a business or a workplace level, to allow targeted analysis and prevention. That means if you have data and facts in front of you, you are a much more informed decision-maker, and it can be driving by the establishment of waste prevention targets. At the moment, a lot of places we visit don’t have targets at all, because they don’t know that there is a…or, they know that there’s a problem – that’s why they’re talking to me – but they don’t know that we can actually dissect it, and then try and put in some new technologies and methodologies.

EM: And what role should local governments play in driving change in this part of the world?

DM: Well one of things we’ve been able to do with our success, at a local level, is allow government and relevant stakeholders to play a pivotal role. They’re also talking about laws being introduced to ensure organic waste is handled in a responsible manner. And that’s a very general term, “being responsible”. It has to be better than what’s happening at the moment. There are laws and regulations, but they have to be enforced and monitored as well. So, we’ve been able to change a bit of habit and behaviour accordingly. And that’s been wonderful for us in the last ten months.

EM: Wow, that’s really cool, that’s really inspiring. And finally, do you have a quick word of advice for our listeners in similar situations?

DM: Yeah, certainly, I mean it’s not so much as a sales gimmick or a slogan, but you know, if you have a look at what we take from the ground, we should it back in the ground. When I do work in India, for example, Mother Nature allows trees at a certain time to lose their leaves. So in India what they do is they gather up the leaves and they burn them. In the end of the day, those leaves play an important role when they fall back to the ground and when you put them on soils because they act as a natural sort of remedy for the soil to be enhanced.

And from a government-driver perspective: you cannot achieve national and economical prosperity unless you invest in community outcomes. And a cleaner environment creates growth potential for economic and community prosperity.

EM: Brilliantly said. And unfortunately that’s all the time we have for today. Best of luck in the future now, and thanks for coming on the show!

DM: Thank you.

That was Daniel Mitroussidis for the Organic Stream on Compostory.org. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about ITSA’s work or the Qatar project, you can find Daniel’s email address on the ITSA website – that’s www.itsa.net.au. As always, you can find us on compostory.org or on Twitter: our Twitter handle is compostoryorg. Thanks for listening and hope you’ll tune in next time.

 

Plastic Bags as Savior – Part 2

By Gerry Gillespie, Zero Waste Australia.

Following up on this blog post, Gerry Gillespie digs deeper on using the plastic bag as inexpensive collection infrastructure for local compost systems.

Marikina was not the first community to try a recycling program fueled by plastic bags. In a trial conducted in New Zealand in 1998,  called Tag Bag^tm, households were asked to use the standard plastic shopping bag to separate their domestic waste into four categories.

They were given a simple sheet of instructions and asked to separate their waste into paper, recyclables, organic and residual waste.  The bags were  sealed with blue, yellow, green or red tape, depending on its contents and placed together into a single collection bin.

The bin contents were collected by a single truck and separated into their categories at the recycling station. Contamination from one material stream to another was minimal.

This trial had proven that the worst characteristic of the plastic bag, its environmental permanence – had made it the perfect piece of infrastructure to source-separate waste.  Once the plastic bag is used to collect waste materials, the bag itself is also captured for recycling or reuse.

All human populations produce organic waste suitable for composting in the growing, processing and preparation of food and to some extent, in food scraps after meals.

This same organic waste, when it degrades and rots, presents health problems for local communities when it is dumped near communities. When waste is present in market places and in close proximity to populations, it attracts vermin and associated disease.

In Curitiba, Brazil, the problems caused by waste in slum areas were addressed by a program, where the poor exchanged plastic bags of waste for food at government drop-off points. The net effect was a dramatic fall in community health costs due to the removal of organic waste.

Could it be possible to expand this type of program into any area where organic waste is causing health issues and wasteful plastic bags are present? While it may not be possible to collect and sell recycled materials in some parts of the world,  it is always possible to compost at any scale.

While organic material makes up more than half of the waste stream in most ‘developed’ countries, regardless of its quantity, compost can be processed through simple composting or worm farming in a small, enclosed area.

If people were given the ability to collect organic waste and compost it at no cost other than their labour, the end product could be very beneficial to the community.   Compost could help grow food in local communities, especially in areas with limited space in pots, tires, broken buckets and small garden beds.

Compost bins don’t need to be fancy bins; they can be made from ‘puddled’ mud, cement or clay bricks, mattresses, rammed earth, straw bales, old mattresses held in place with wooden sticks or poles, bundles of newspapers, logs or stones. Composting can provide the opportunity and the empowerment to people to grow their own food at a most elementary level.

By focusing the compost process on food production as a community benefit rather than composting as a waste reduction tool, it becomes impeccably clear that all things on this planet are resources, even plastic bags.

Edited by: Rachel Chibidakis

Photo by: Flickr user Kables, used under a Creative Commons license.

Getting the Recipe Right – A Dead Cow Versus Industrial Perfection

by Craig Coker, Chairman at Virginia Composting Council

In this blog post, Craig Coker shares two illustrative stories that marked his career and describes a few basics of the composting science – or art?

Just about anything that was once alive can be composted.  The simplest compost pile I’ve built was at a farm by covering a dead cow with hay and sawdust.  Six months passed and voila, I had compost!  On the other hand, I’ve built piles at an industrial composting facility that came from fifteen different contracted materials, varying from sewage sludge to food processing scraps to wallboard.  In both situations, it was absolutely critical to get the materials proportioned properly which we will delve into.

First, a little on the science:  composting parameters include chemical concentrations of carbon, nitrogen, and soluble salts, along with physical characteristics of moisture content, bulk density and volatile solids.  These are the very factors that go into how I build my recipes. I am fond of saying that composting is like baking a cake; if the ingredients for the cake (flour, sugar, eggs) are not in the right proportions, the cake will not rise or it will not taste good. It is the same in good composting. If the ingredients are in the wrong proportions:  the carbon-to-nitrogen ratios will be off, the moisture content will be incorrect, there won’t be enough volatile solids to fire up the biological reaction, the free air space might be too low to allow good air flow, or the soluble salts might be too high to be ideal for plants.

While composting sewage sludge with wood chips and many other materials was not a revolutionary equation, it was very precise from strict parameters. At an industrial composting facility, an aeration system was utilized to blow air into piles that were 30’ wide by 100’ long by 10’ high. Composting under this forced aeration system lasted for 21 days, then the piles were broken down and moved outside for curing. Waste materials were delivered to the receipt area next to the mixing hall, where they were stored in separate piles. The loader operator working in the mixing hall had to know how many loader buckets of each material he needed to add together to make a good composting recipe. I used an Excel spreadsheet to develop his recipe. Samples of each waste material were analyzed in a qualified laboratory and then put the values for carbon, nitrogen, moisture and bulk density into the spreadsheet. I adjusted the weights of each ingredient until the spreadsheet model indicated I had a carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of at least 25, and a moisture content of at least 55%. I used the bulk density values to convert the weight to volumes.

I climbed up into the loader operator’s cab to show him the recipe. He said he had a 6 cubic yard bucket on the loader. In sum, we were able to figure out he needed to take so many buckets from this pile and so many buckets from another pile, which he fed into a mechanical mixing system. The properly-mixed ingredients were moved into the composting hall by a conveyor. Perhaps this is sounding a little too precise and calculated. And to that end, you might be wondering:  how did I have such luck with composting the dead cow?

I was running a dairy manure and sawdust composting facility at a farm in western North Carolina. One of the cows had died overnight and the farmer was planning to dig a hole in the fields to bury it. I suggested he let us compost it instead. Agreeing, he brought the animal in the bucket of his tractor and laid it down on a 12 inch thick bed of sawdust we built. I realized that the high nitrogen content of the body coupled with the large size of the cow would slow the process and risk odors, as well as vectors. I punched a couple of dozen holes in the body with a pitchfork to allow access for the bacteria and covered it with an 18 inch-thick layer of hay which gave the pile good bioavailable carbon. We watered the hay until it was damp to improve the moisture content and finished by covering the hay with 8 inches of sawdust to discourage birds and other vectors from poking around. We kept the outer layer of the sawdust wetted down when it wasn’t raining to keep it from blowing around. After 3 months, we dug a hole in one end of the pile and found a leg bone.  We left the pile in place for another 3 months, and when we dug into it, found just a few bone fragments and lots of dark brown compost… Voila!

Is compost a haphazard event?  It can be, but regardless, composting is both a meticulous art and science.  

 edited by Rachel Chibidakis