WyeCycle's Zero (Organic) Waste Project has bought a Big Hanna automated composter from the Swedish firm Jorvik with the support of a 79,800 grant from the Community Recycling and Economic Development (CRED) Programme.
” We are essentially proving that this machine can be used by community groups and it is capable of dealing with large amounts of waste.“
– Benji Donaldson, WyeCycle project coordinator
The two-year project targets the 37% of residual waste in the Ashford villages that a waste analysis revealed to be compostable. WyeCycle will compare two in-vessel compost technologies, the new automated process and a Biffaward supported “low cost low tech” system.
As well as achieving its overall objective of diverting 100% of organic waste from landfill, WyeCycle want to be in a position to make recommendations to other community groups on in-vessel composting.
Benji Donaldson, project coordinator for WyeCycle, said: “We will be testing the machine against our current process, which is a basic in-vessel system, to compare the products we get out of them. We are essentially proving that this machine can be used by community groups and it is capable of dealing with large amounts of waste.”
Collections
The organic waste for the project is being kerbside collected weekly from 1,000 households in the villages of Wye and Brook in Kent. At the moment about 125 tonnes of garden waste is collected a year from all 1,000 households, while 75 tonnes of food waste is collected from 300 households.
Mr Donaldson said that the community group is looking to more than treble the food waste collections by rolling the service out to 900 households as well as collecting catering waste from schools and local businesses.
The estimated 300 tonnes a year of kitchen waste that will be collected after the roll out will be split 50:50 between the two in-vessel composters for direct comparison.
Tonnages collected by the project have been boosted by the decision by the local borough council to switch to fortnightly collections of residual waste, Mr Donaldson added.
“Residual waste is collected weekly from the villages by Ashford borough council, mainly due to our success in reducing household waste going to landfill,” he explained.
Support
The compost end product has gained interest from a local organic farmer but the project has also received interest from landscape gardeners.
Alison Rowe, South East regional manager for the New Opportunities Fund that distributes the CRED grants, said: “Increasing household composting and promoting sustainable communities are key priorities for the Fund and we are delighted to be supporting Zero (Organic) Waste Project in this area.”
WyeCycle is already involved a number of environmental initiatives, including household collections of waste electronics and dry recyclables, paint and furniture re-use schemes and trade waste collections. For its activities, WyeCycle receives disposal credits from Kent county council and collection credits from Ashford borough councils.
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