Brome Compost
Green Box Compost is a private curbside organics pick up service founded by Ben Stanger, who has a background in green construction and commercial composting. Their site was installed in May 2022 and takes in both residential and commercial food waste. The City of Sun Prairie changed its Official Zoning Ordinance to allow commercial composting closer to residential areas than was previously allowed as such activities had been restricted to industrial zones. This opened the door for Green Box Compost to found its composting site using a BROME 632 composter, a first of its kind in the area.
Project features
The choice of the BROME system allows for a smaller site footprint compared to some of the more ‘traditional’ composting methods such as windrow piles. One of the additional benefits of the chosen site was the repurposing of buildings that were once used to house a dog kennel. The system is installed indoors, in a hangar, protecting it from extreme weather and potential animal attraction.
Reducing hauling costs and landfill tipping fees are a bonus for Sun Prairie. This helps its level of sustainability by avoiding the transport and burying organic waste.
Using a closed in-vessel system to compost means that the time to achieve both volume reduction and finished compost is shortened significantly. The beginning of composting process is accelerated and further composting and curing can be done in storage bags rather than windrows or piles.
Choice of composting equipment and project objectives
The industrial composting system constructed for Green Box consists of one BROME 632 rotating composter, measuring 6ft wide by 32ft long, as well as a conveyor and a mixer for the pre-treatment of the organics before its introduction into the composter. This choice of equipment was determined knowing what volumes needed to be composted. In this case, a project was put forward to treat 9400 lbs (4.2 metric tonnes) a week, 244 short tons (218 metric tons).
See the many benefits that an industrial in-vessel composting system can have for municipalities
Here is a video taken during installation (Facebook): https://fb.watch/dNMa2yxLpj/
Related articles:
Change in composting ordinance could bring new business to Sun Prairie. (Nov 2021)
Dane County native seeks to open Madison area’s first ‘in-vessel’ composting service (December 2021)