Composting Food Waste on a Remote Mining Site: Dominion Diamond Case Study

Dominion Diamond chose BROME Compost to instill change and contribute to their green shift by helping them to introduce new practices at their Ekati diamond mine.

Dominion Diamond’s main goal was to become an example of eco-responsibility by making their Ekati site the first northern mine to compost most of their waste instead of resorting to incineration or burial. The main challenge at hand was to find a composting unit with sufficient capacity, as the mine produces more than half a ton of organic waste every day.

The BROME Compost team went in to set up a 10-meter long composting unit which can transform up to a metric ton of inputs a day. The out-going compost is environmentally safe and nutrient rich. This material is then laid out in a fully-fenced area for up to one year (in this case) before being used as an amendment for soil remediation as part of land reclamation programs.

As a part of Dominion Diamond’s broader environmental commitment platform, this decision was also a financial success. The Ekati mine:

• reduced its diesel consumption by 66,000 gallons a year;
• prevented 615 tons of greenhouse gases from going into the atmosphere.