Composting and Worm Composting

Commercial/Industrial Composting with Worms

Commercial and industrial enterprises, in nearly all cases, produce organic waste; often they are not aware of this. The most obvious is waste from processing organic materials, this could be food, baking, brewing, greengrocery etc through to canteen waste and to the less obvious of paper, cardboard and packaging, all of which are capable of being processed by worms.

Because of the locality of the majority of commercial premises, the processing would need to be in an enclosed vessel, there are several available, dealing with small quantities of waste per day (10’s of kilo’s) to much larger quantities (100’s of kilo’s). For the large industrial use there are vessels capable of processing in tonnes.

These vermicomposting vessels reduce the volume of waste by up to 80%, the material left is the nutrient rich casts that should be utilised but even if they are only returned to landfill they can only benefit the site. Small and medium sized flow through systems are now available in this country, they are particularly suitable for premises that have a relatively small output of organic waste materials such as schools, small hotels, canteens etc.

For the large producers on an industrial scale we still have to look overseas for suitable equipment. These vessels are available by importing from countries such as America, Australia and Canada where they have been developed and used successfully for many years or fabricated in the UK according to the need. In certain circumstances where the commercial premises are situated “out of town” it may be possible to use a bed system; this considerably reduces the cost over enclosed vessels particularly where large amounts of material are being dealt with.

Both agricultural and commercial/industrial systems are individually tailored to the needs and require consultancy.

Leave a Reply