Composting Options for City Dwellers

Commercial Composting
- Athens Clarke County}
  https://www.athensclarkecounty.com/4457/Commercial-Composting
  - Costs
    - Start-up costs: ~800K
    - Equipment costs: ~750K
  - What is accepted for compost:
    - Bio solids (from ACC Public Utilities Wastewater Treatment Facilities)
    - Leaf/limb debris and food scraps (from Let Us Compost, $15/month service)
  - Goals:
    - Produce compost for sale ($12/yd^3 or $2/5 gallon if you bring your own bucket, sold 9-3 Monday-Sunday)
    - Reduce carbon footprint
    - Helps to retain moisture in the soil
Costs and Benefits of Commercial Composting:
https://ac.els-cdn.com/S0301479798902146/1-s2.0-S0301479798902146-main.pdf?_tid=2723a4a6-888b-4de2-87c8-37f294fac0b2&acdnat=1519937416_70fe71f94d246b90309f6cf4d79b5929
- Takes $53/ton to process compost, with only $1/ton offset in revenue from selling compost
  - Most facilities receive no revenue for the compost they produce, most of the product being donated to farmers, landscapers, nurseries and landfills
- Odour and residual plastics are the largest issue when it comes to composting at so large a scale
  - How to sort out plastics in the input stage
  - Controlling odour, or creating larger facilities that can be further away, mimicking the scale of garbage disposal
- Composting, upfront, is costlier than regular land disposal of waste on average
  - In some states this is not the case, so a viable solution there but not for GA
- Offset costs of waste management:
  - No need to deal with landfills going forward,
  - Less volume of garbage being taken to landfills, as much of it goes to composting facilities instead
Vermiculture
- Services
  - Tree Hugger
    - https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/vermicomposting-and-vermiculture-worms-bins-and-how-to-get-started.html
  - Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm
    - https://unclejimswormfarm.com/small-scale-composting-worms-vermiculture-city/
  - Worm Poop
    - http://www.wormpoop.com/composting/composting.htm
- Pros-
  - Cheap- 1000 worms for $25
  - Efficient- 1,000 composting worms can create between 8 and 16 ounces of compost per day
- Cons-
  - Gross, too many worms needed to yield a good amount of compost
  - Limited in the things you can compost- no meat, poultry, or fish products, certain vegetables (onion and garlic)

Pick Up
- Let Us Compost
- http://www.letuscompost.com/
  - Athens Based, picks up in Athens and Atlanta
  - Costs for residential composting from LET US COMPOST
    - $15/month
  - Included
    - A kitchen bin for scraps
    - Rolling cart to take it to road and hold full bags
    - New bags weekly
    - Weekly Pickup of scraps
  - Commercial composting with Let Us Compost
    - $35/week
    - Collect scraps 5x a day
  - Accepted: “Meat, bones, coffee, vegetables, fruit, leftovers, dairy and BPI certified wares”
  - All scraps collected taken to Classic City Composting

Conclusions:

Large-scale composting operations, comparable to landfill garbage disposal, are far too costly to implement
- Exceptions are in the North-east where regular land disposal is increasingly expensive
Important to consider legislative changes on the production side, forcing corporations to create products that are more easily recyclable
- Put tax burden of recycling on corps, as there is no existing infrastructure to mindfully dispose of certain materials (see plastics, etc)
- Or force corps to put in place easier access to plastic recycling
- Maybe ask Roosevelt about creating state-wide/national reform
Large scale vermiculture is a serious system to be considered, as it efficiently produces compost (time wise)
- A very in depth process, requiring constant attention
Incineration/Gasification might be a more lucrative/useful waste management alternative