Where Does Your Compost Go?
Where Does Your Composting Go?
This was a great little film about where our local compost goes once we put it in our green bins on the street for pick up. In this video compost is described as a process of breaking down our "green waste", which includes things like food scraps, leaves, coffee grinds, and Christmas trees. Compost is the end result of this process. The process is a six step process starting from the point it leaves your house. Once the collection trucks pick them up from your street the trucks 1) bring your compost to a transfer center. 2) There the trucks dump their contents into larger transfer trucks that deliver the contents to Redwood Landfill. The trucks dump their loads on a concrete pad. 3) The compost and all the vital water that comes out of the trucks get put through a grinder where it is ground into smaller pieces. 4). These pieces are put into piles, called Covered Aerated Static Piles, or compost piles, for curing. The curing process includes aerating the piles with pipes. The curing process takes three to four weeks during which time microorganisms begin decomposing the piles. The piles maintain a high temperature of 131 degrees for at least three days to kill off pathogens, fly larvae and weed seeds. The piles are tested for pathogens and heavy metals. 5). The cured compost then has a cooling time where fungus is allowed to grow and the piles are tested for pathogens and heavy metals. 6) The compost is the pushed through a fine screen to make the final salable product as composting soil. This compost soil is put into bags which can be purchased by landscaping centers and vineyards. The soil mostly stays in the Bay Area which gets cycled through the agriculture industry.
Waste management is crucial for helping to make a sustainable life on our planet. Installing low-flow toilets is one way to make your footprint a little smaller as these toilets use far less water to flush our waste. In many areas in the Bay Area you can also start your own compost pile and this would allow you to have good composting soil that is free and doesn't require much energy or any fossil fuels to drive your waste around. Making sure to recycle things properly is another way to help with waste management. When things like plastic bags are put in the wrong bin they end up detracting from the purpose of recycling and they cause more problems when they are not disposed of properly.
This was a great little film about where our local compost goes once we put it in our green bins on the street for pick up. In this video compost is described as a process of breaking down our "green waste", which includes things like food scraps, leaves, coffee grinds, and Christmas trees. Compost is the end result of this process. The process is a six step process starting from the point it leaves your house. Once the collection trucks pick them up from your street the trucks 1) bring your compost to a transfer center. 2) There the trucks dump their contents into larger transfer trucks that deliver the contents to Redwood Landfill. The trucks dump their loads on a concrete pad. 3) The compost and all the vital water that comes out of the trucks get put through a grinder where it is ground into smaller pieces. 4). These pieces are put into piles, called Covered Aerated Static Piles, or compost piles, for curing. The curing process includes aerating the piles with pipes. The curing process takes three to four weeks during which time microorganisms begin decomposing the piles. The piles maintain a high temperature of 131 degrees for at least three days to kill off pathogens, fly larvae and weed seeds. The piles are tested for pathogens and heavy metals. 5). The cured compost then has a cooling time where fungus is allowed to grow and the piles are tested for pathogens and heavy metals. 6) The compost is the pushed through a fine screen to make the final salable product as composting soil. This compost soil is put into bags which can be purchased by landscaping centers and vineyards. The soil mostly stays in the Bay Area which gets cycled through the agriculture industry.
Waste management is crucial for helping to make a sustainable life on our planet. Installing low-flow toilets is one way to make your footprint a little smaller as these toilets use far less water to flush our waste. In many areas in the Bay Area you can also start your own compost pile and this would allow you to have good composting soil that is free and doesn't require much energy or any fossil fuels to drive your waste around. Making sure to recycle things properly is another way to help with waste management. When things like plastic bags are put in the wrong bin they end up detracting from the purpose of recycling and they cause more problems when they are not disposed of properly.
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