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