Johannesburg - Feed soil, not landfills. This is Gavin Heron’s mantra and he’s helping people to do just that.
His business - Earth Probiotic Recycling Solutions - assists companies, households and communities to recycle their food waste back into the soil through composting.
Heron spoke about food waste and on-site composting at the annual Waste-Management and Recycling Conference on Thursday.
Finding solutions was important for many reasons, a major one being the lack of space for new landfill sites.
Food waste was generated during food preparation and by leftovers, as well as through lack of legislation that made it mandatory to sell ugly or blemished fruit and vegetables.
“Twenty percent of food is wasted because people don’t understand (best before) labels,” Heron said.
Three viable solutions were turning it into animal feed, converting it into biogas and using that to create energy and composting.
Although Heron’s company provided small and large commercial composting solutions, during his presentation he focused on the large-scale industrial, on-site composting.
This is done through a specialised machine, the Heron IVC, which was designed and manufactured in the country by Earth Probiotic. Food waste is dumped into a macerator that chops it up. It is then fed into a large box, where a large mechanical arm moves through the mixture to aerate it. Waste paper and cardboard, as well as bacteria are added to aid decomposition.
“For every ton of food waste that you put in, it will reduce by a third and become compost at the end,” Heron said.
He said the machine’s electricity usage was low and it could easily run off solar. It could also process other organic matter such as wood chips or manure.
He explained how a composting machine installed at Emperors Palace last September had provided a learning curve.
The team realised that Emperors Palace had a much higher amount of food waste in December and would need to increase their operating team during peak periods.
Different seasons also meant different types of food waste. For example, there is a higher citrus content in winter necessitating that the bacteria mix added to the composter be changed accordingly. The cardboard waste also had to be increased.
Heron said it was fundamental that the people who used the machine understood how it worked, why its use was important and that they bought into the project in order to ensure it was successful.
He studied an institution’s food preparation and serving systems before training staff and installing the Heron IVC.
It was important to understand the operational process of that particular organisation, in order to run the composter in a way that slotted in conveniently with existing operations and to train its users in the appropriate way.
Some of the compost generated at Emperors Palace was used in its gardens, while the rest was sold to a composting business.
@Gabi_Falanga
THE STAR