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Composting Facility
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Landfill
Outdoor Composting Area

Ever wonder what happens to your green cart contents……read on

Organics are collected at the curb and brought to the OVWRC to be deposited onto a tipping floor. During the winter the tipping floor is heated because most of the material coming in is frozen.
   

The loader takes a bucket of material from the tipping floor and drops it on to a conveyor belt for a pre-sort done by Employees.
   
During the pre-sort the material moves past Employees who remove all items that are not organic. After the material is pre-sorted, it moves up the conveyor belt and falls into a shredder. The shredder cuts up the material to make it more compostable.
   

This is a picture of non-organic material that people placed in the green cart. Plastic bags, regular garbage, toilet seats, paint cans and auto parts are a NO-NO!
   
Once the material has passed through the shredder it is sorted again on a 2nd sorting line to remove any material missed during the pre-sort. A magnet at the end of the line removes all metal pieces in the material; such as silverware, nails and bottle caps.
   
This is the sorted feedstock that is ready to be composted.
   

After the green cart material has been shredded and sorted, it is ready for the mixing process. Approximately 3 bucket loads of feedstock are mixed with one bucket of woodchips. Woodchips act as a bulking agent and are used to acquire the desired carbon to nitrogen ratio, moisture content, structure, particle size and pH.

   
Once the feedstock is mixed it is moved by conveyor into an ECS CV Composter, a large containerized in-vessel composting system, with a 32m3 capacity. Other features include a 100% stainless steel interior and a patented aeration floor. We operate 11 of these containers.
   
Once the containers are full they are taken outside where an air supply and temperature probes are connected to the container. Air is circulated through the material for 14 days, temperatures reach up to 65ºC and three of those 14 days the temperature must be 55ºC to achieve pathogen kill and weed seed kill.
   

After the 14 day period is complete, the material is emptied out of the container onto the Outdoor Composting Area. The material finishes the composting process and cools down. This period can last up to six months. Once the curing period is complete the material will be screened.
   
This is a picture of the screening process. Larger materials (Overs) that haven't composted and non-organic material is separated leaving a rich soil amendment.
   

The final result of the process is compost, a rich soil amendment that can be used on your gardens and lawns. Screening of compost is done in the Spring and Fall, click here to find out compost prices and sale dates.

Want to know about Backyard Composting? Click here.

 
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