httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvcqbvBkyNQ
This is the best video showing how a commercial composting facility handles their stuff.
Keep in mind this is a $20 million facility complete with 2 ton Goretex tarps and capacity of 500+ tons a day. Wow. I know of a few customers of theirs that are quite happy with their stuff, and I’ve been a recipient of their finished product and we saw how that did…remember?
One thing that I always wonder about…how can they tell if their wood waste contains creosote or CCA, or was formerly used in phytoremedial projects? Would the critters in the pile break down that nasty stuff? Compost is a cheaper disposal route per ton than the landfill for most (within proximity to a facility, of course)… so wouldn’t that tempt more unnecessary waste going to this place without care if it’s compostable and/or non-toxic? Gross thought.
I guess that’s sadly not much different than sending the same toxic stuff to a landfill, to leach out in due time into the water table (which does happen, and landfill liners are actually permitted to leak quite a bit).
I guess it always comes back to toxins in, toxins out, doesn’t it?
The Wilmington Organics Recycling Center is permitted and designed to take in a maximum of 700 tons of material a day on any given day. To reach the 160,000 ton facility capacity yearly, we need to average a little over 500 tons of material per day.
As for ensuring that treated lumber doesn’t doesn’t get dumped at the facility, we have people screen all the material as it arrives. On top of that, we have to test our compost for various constituents including Arsenic and Chromium, the two major components of CCA.