Local News Highlights Composting
What is Institutional Composting?
Institutional Composting creates a high grade soil amendment from the landscape waste and food waste produced at typical country clubs and similar facilities such as universities, military installations, and self contained resorts. These soil amendments are then used on golf courses and other horticultural elements of the facility. The highly successful ECW Institutional Composting System can be seen at the exclusive Broken Sound Club in Boca Raton, Florida.
The Broken Sound Compost Team
Left to Right: Dean Richardson, ECW LLC; Gary Toll, President ECW LLC; Ed West, ECW LLC; Bryan Cooney, Mechanical Equipment Manager; Don Schaevitz, Immediate Past President, Broken Sound Club; John Crean, General Manager, Broken Sound Club; Ivan Snyder, President, Broken Sound Club; Eileen Sands, Secretary, Broken Sound Club; Marvin Dicker, First Vice President, Broken Sound Club; Robert Breakstone, Member Board of Governors, Broken Sound Club; Don Mitzner, Member Board of Governors, Broken Sound Club; Ira Salk, Second Vice President, Broken Sound Club. Not shown: Joe Hubbard, Director of Golf Course Maintenance, Broken Sound Club; Dieumerite Etienne, Club Course Superintendent; and Exilon Etienne, Compost System Manager.
Our Associates from SDSWCD
Left to right: Morgan Levy, Administrator; Sonny Clayton, Sales Manager; Bill Townshend, Project Manager; Don Grimsley, BMT Nursery Team Leader; Robert Perez, MIL Laboratory, Team Leader (not shown)
Feedstock to Organic Soil Amendment in 5 days
In Just Five Days!
The Broken Sound Compost Project combines imagination and modern science, using otherwise wasted resources to enhance the appearance, playability, and health of two golf courses. This project uses food waste from four kitchens, and landscape waste from two golf courses to produce an effective soil amendment while saving the heavy cost of disposing of these materials and reducing the cost of conventional fertilizer, pesticide and fungicide by at least a third. The project was developed for Broken Sound by Environmentally Controlled Waste LLC with the cooperation of South Dade Soil and Water Conservation District.
Equipment Index
- Shredder
- Blender
- In-vessel Composter or Digester
- Conveyor that off loads composted material
Bins
There are 4 bins for storage of feedstock. The three bins on the right are for storage of raw materials as they arrive from the golf courses. The 4th bin (extreme left) contains shredded raw material ready for blending with food waste.
Shredder
Powered by economical Three Phase Electricity, the shear shredder grinds the raw materials down to perfect size for composting. After shredding, a conveyor moves the material into the 4th bin. This model shredder is extremely quiet, an essential attribute as the composting operation is located very close to expensive houses in a residential area.
Blender
Each day material from the 4th bin must be uniformly mixed with fresh food waste delivered from the four kitchens at Broken Sound. The Blender is designed to do this and then move the mixed feedstock into the Digester through a screw conveyor. The daily input into the Digester is approximately 7 cy of landscape waste and 3 cy of food waste.
Digester
The Digester is a 48 cy in-vessel composter. It is sloped down from the input end to the discharge end, and it rotates very slowly at a scheduled time each day. The volume of material is reduced during the composting cycle of five days so that 10 cy of input becomes 7 to 9 cy of compost. The finished material is hot (approximately 150 to 160 degrees F.). It must cool down before spreading it on the golf course. This cooling down phase of the process is called curing, further described below.
Conveyor
The out feed conveyor (Number 4 in the photo above) deposits the compost into a dump truck which further moves the compost to one of two curing areas located in the maintenance areas of the two Broken Sound golf courses. Finished material (after five days) comes out the end of the Digester when the doors are opened. The trough at the end of the digester prevents messy spillage while efficiently feeding the conveyor.
Trommel Screen
This rotating screening device separates the compost into a particle size of ¼ inch minus for spreading on the golf courses and rejects particles larger than ¼ inch. The rejects are not wasted, but rather combined with the next day's input to the system. A major benefit of using the rejects is kick starting the compost process with mature, efficient, well developed aerobic bacteria. Food waste from the kitchens is stored overnight at the source in sealed green trash cans and delivered to the Compost area each morning in the cans.
Curing Areas
Curing takes place at the Club Course and also at the Old Course Maintenance Areas. The Curing process takes about three weeks. Finished compost fresh out of the Digester is carefully placed in windrows over perforated plastic pipe through which forced air is blown into the piles to speed the curing time and obviate any odors that would be caused by anaerobic bacteria. To further control odor and speed curing, the piles are covered by special tarps designed for this purpose. The photo above shows a typical windrow, the special tarp, the forced air blower in green, and special weights (in blue) designed to keep the tarp anchored during windy conditions, typical of Florida. Careful anchoring also helps to avoid odors.