Compost Contamination Removal – Earth Equipment Ltd
2nd March 2021
Earth Equipment Ltd have been called in to help with compost contamination removal.
Plastic waste in composting is a huge problem. Most composting facilities shred their green waste as soon as it comes into their facility to reduce the volume. This has an adverse effect on the plastic contamination, where a piece of plastic was singular before, as soon as it goes through the shredder, it is turned into multiple pieces. Ultimately getting it at the front end before it gets shredded would be ideal, but unfortunately it is extremely hard to put into practice with time restraints.
Not removing the plastics at the start means, the plastic can keep going around the composting procedure indefinitely, compounding the amount of plastic contamination within the compost as the years go on, and as it stays in there longer, it produces more and more micro plastics, which further contaminate our waterways and livestock.
Earth Equipment Ltd were tasked with removing the contamination from the compost.
The Process
Screen the material after composting, remove the plus 50mm and minus 20mm.
- The plus 50mm will be reintroduced into the composting procedure until it further breaks down.
- The minus 20mm is put into a trommel where it is further screened down to produce two fractions a 10mm minus and a 10mm plus
- The 20 to 50mm is fed into a CRS Sitemaster picking cabin.
20-50mm Product
It was seen that 90% of the plastic contamination was within the 20-50mm product.
We therefore concentrated our cleanup on this section. On the discharge conveyor of the screen we used a Screenpod vacuum system that sucked out the light particles from this fraction, we put two of these vacuums on it to give it the best chance. After the two vacuums the material was then fed into a CRS Sitemaster Mobile Picking Cabin where an operative quality checked the material and picked out any contaminates that got past the vacuums.
This process was extremely effective, and is definitely the best solution to ensure that your compost is as clean as possible. See video below.
If you want to talk about Compost Contamination Removal or anything similar please click here to get in touch.