The stench is overpowering yet organic, somewhat worse than a beer brewery or cigarette factory.

Stephen King asks a visitor if he’d prefer a less rank place to talk, but he doesn’t apologize — the compost project he’s standing before is a key and growing cog in Macon County’s solid waste program.
“Our composting program has grown faster than anyone had ever anticipated,” said King, the recycling coordinator for Macon County.

“It’s also a good way to save tax dollars. It cost money to put trash in the landfill, but anything we can reuse or not put into the ground, it saves money,” King said. “We also create humus, a kind of topsoil that we hope to begin selling in the near future.”

Macon County composts about 16 tons of organic waste each day out of the 70 tons of total waste that come into its landfill. In addition to composting, the county also recycles a sizable portion of its waste stream, about 36 percent in all. The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources lists Macon at eighth in the state for the amount of waste recycled per person, about 180 pounds per year.

King is a convincing spokesman for the compost project and all recycling efforts. He has a degree in environmental science and previously worked as the recycling coordinator for the city of Greensboro. He is intricately involved in marketing all the recycled materials that come to the landfill from Macon and Jackson counties, and he says it is more to him than just a job.

“Look at this beautiful land. We’re destroying it, and most people don’t want to be a part of the solution,” King said. “What you throw away and how you throw it away has an effect.”

The composting takes place on a concrete pad on the edge of the landfill Macon County shares with Jackson. The waste — sawdust from Zickgraph Industries, organic waste from households, tomatoes from a farmer’s co-op, and all the food wastes from the Bi-Lo in Franklin — is worked into “windrows,” long rows on the pad. It is moved and sifted as needed, getting as hot as 112 degrees.
That’s warm enough to kill parasites and other impurities. In three months the decaying mix is top soil of such quality that it could be sold. Many people in the community have asked about doing just that.
“I’ve eaten a tomato sandwich from the plants growing in the humus pile,” said King, reaching down and uprooting a tomato seedling from the fertile mix.

The simplicity of composting is appealing to King. Mixing the rows and monitoring the compost pile takes one person about 20 hours per week. It takes an additional six people to operate the rest of the landfill. Composting organic waste costs taxpayers $5 per ton, while solid waste costs $59 per ton to dispose of in the landfill.

“We’re always looking for ways to divert material from the landfill. The second, new cell was supposed to last 20 years, but it’s filling up faster than we had hoped,” King said.

Putting organic wastes into the landfill causes many problems, according to King. Organic wastes, especially food, are mostly water. A tomato, for instance, is 85 percent water. It weighs a lot and takes up space. The water also creates leachate, a kind of percolating waste product common in landfills. Leachate has the potential to cause pollution problems and is a key ingredient in the creation of methane gases. In other words, organic wastes fill up landfills more quickly and then contribute to post-closure problems. Taking them out of the waste stream eliminates the problems.

Macon County’s successful composting program is due in large part, King said, to local participation. One of those participants is David Miller, the manager of the local Bi-Lo grocery store.

“They have been great,” said King. “Really, they are an inspiration. They have worked with us and worked with us.”

All food wastes generated by the produce, deli-bakery and meat departments, in addition to paper from the administrative offices at the grocery store, are separately collected and hauled to the county’s composting site. Bi-Lo is responsible for one of the 16 tons sent each day to the compost site.

King has worked closely with Miller and the health department to create a good system. Each day the grocery store puts a layer of sawdust over its waste so it won’t smell or attract insects. The county picks it up every other day.

“We work with them to make sure it is not a health hazard or an operating risk,” King said. “The health department monitors it very closely.”

With Bi-Lo already on board, King is trying to work out a plan to use food wastes from the local school system. He would also like to convince restaurants to get involved in the composting program.

“Probably 90 percent of the waste stream from restaurants could be composted. That could reduce their solid waste fees by 90 percent,” said King.

If these other entities did get involved in the composting program, King said Macon would be among a small number of counties that could actually meet the state’s goal of 40 percent recycling by the end of 2001.

“It’s neat what we’ve done. It’s taken a lot of collaboration with different people and groups,” King said.

“In two years there will be no sign of what we’ve done back here, none whatsoever” he said, sweeping his arms around the compost site. “In 2,000 years, you could dig up the landfill and it’d all still be there.”

 

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The Smoky Mountain News