Waste Management on Tuesday announced an undisclosed investment in the Peninsula Compost Company, which owns and operates the Wilmington Organic Recycling Center serving Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
The WORC is the only permitted in-vessel organics processing center in the Mid-Atlantic region, and processes -- unloads, separates, mixes and grinds-- 250 to 300 tons per day of organic waste from organic feedstock.
With a capacity of up to 600 tons per day, it's the largest composting facility in the eastern United States.
The facility's operations adds more than 200,000 tons to Waste Management's current 1.7 million ton annual organics processing capacity. It also helps Waste Management expand organics recycling services in the region.
The investment follows Waste Management's recent acquisition of a controlling interest in organic lawn and garden product manufacturer Garick. It also falls in line with WM's investments in Enerkem (which uses gasification tech to produce renewable transportation fuels) and Harvest Power (which uses anaerobic digestion tech to produce renewable energy) last year.
Fast facts about the market:
- The green retail market has been growing at 20 percent annually.
- North America generates over 80 million tons of organic waste each year.
- About one-third of municipal solid waste in the United States is organic; that includes food, yard and wood waste.
- About 65 percent of yard waste and 2.5 percent of food waste collected in the U.S. is currently diverted from disposal.
It's no surprise that Waste Management sees green, so to speak, in recycling organic materials for use as energy, transportation fuels or specialty chemicals.
The Chinese central government is planed to invest some 125 billion USD in the solid waste management industry. Many composting, biogas, and trash to power projects are going on. More readings http://wastemanagementworld.com/%E5%8D%81%E4%BA%8C%E4%BA%94%E6%9C%9F%E9%97%B4%E6%88%91%E5%9B%BD%E5%9B%BA%E5%BA%9F%E4%BA%A7%E4%B8%9A%E6%8A%95%E8%B5%84%E5%B0%86%E8%BE%BE8000%E4%BA%BF%E5%85%83/
The process of composting produces a lot of heat that sterilizes things like insect larvae and eggs and most bacteria. I don't think mad cow disease is an issue unless you're feeding the compost to an animal.
I wonder what type of quality and safety measures are in place to prevent diseased (mad cow) or infested (pine beatles, gypsy moths) material from being disseminated via the compost product. I'm interested to know how WM will handle this. Once I'm assured that the material would be safe, I'd be all for this!
What is the pie chart next to the write-up? If it's WMI's recyclable input stream, that means whatever of ~85% organic not directly recyclable is almost all compostable. Big money in the bank...
1) What constitutes "organic feedstock"? 2) What do the reported fast facts have to do with the "organic feedstock" that WORC is processing?
the pie chart is WM's mix of recycled materials in 2009, taken from its 2010 sustainability report.