The Art and Science of Composting
Sustainable Materials Management, Inc. will go to great lengths to ensure our composting process is as clean and safe as our product. We will be employing Aerated Static Bay technology, designed by O2 Compost. Each active compost bay will be lined with perforated pipes attached to a blower that supplies the composting material with the appropriate oxygen levels for optimal decomposition.
While we build our full scale facility SMM Inc. is testing small scale batches in our O2 Compost aerated micro bins. These 2.4 cubic yard boxes utilize the same aeration system and management principals, allowing us to develope the "mix recipes" that work best with our feedstocks.
Quality control
Inspection: Every load brought to our facility will be inspected by trained facility staff. Loads that do not meet our rigorous standards will be rejected and not used in our composting mixture.
Monitoring: We monitor the temperature of every batch to ensure that pathogen reducing temperatures, of 130 °F or greater, are sustained for the necessary length of time. These high temperatures help create a product you can feel safe using around your food, children and pets.
Testing: Before we put any compost on the market we get it tested to verify its safety and nutrient composition. Downloadable copies of these test will be made available.
The Magic Mix
Composting is a natural process of decomposition that is predominantly driven by beneficial bacteria and fungi. We will mix our food scraps with shredded tree debris in a specific ratio that provides ideal conditions for these organisms to thrive. Understanding the mechanisms at play may involve science, but there is an art to balancing our feedstocks from batch to batch.
Check our resources page to learn more about the composting process.
Aeration
The bacteria and fungi that are responsible for decomposition rely on oxygen, just like us. Without enough oxygen, the material will start to anaerobically and produce fowl odors and methane. We will use a system called "forced aeration", designed by O2 Compost, to ensure that these organisms have the oxygen they need to aerobically decompose your food scraps into compost. Perforated pipes that run underneath the composting material will be connected to powerful blowers that are programmed to regularly supply the piles and hardworking decomposers with the oxygen they will need.
Odor Prevention
The aeration does the bulk of the work in preventing odors. For added odor protection we will cover each active compost bay with un-screened compost or wood chips to act as a "bio-filter". Odor compounds get absorbed and processed by the living micro-organisms in the bio-filter layer.