The Clean Washington Center developed this guide to help managers and decision-makers evaluate the feasibility of composting food scraps and other organic residuals. In its approach, the guide targets the following types of businesses or organizations:

•    Food processors or wholesalers;

•    Hospitals, group homes, and other institutions;

•    Schools and universities;

•    Corrections facilities;

•    Military bases;

•    Hotels, camps, and resorts; and

•     Farms (especially as part of other facilities).

The users of this guide would likely have titles such as facility manager, operations manager, materials manager, solid waste or recycling coordinator, environmental or safety manager. In a small organization, an individual may simply have one or more of those job duties without a specific title. Others who might benefit from using this guide include solid waste and recycling managers, consultants, and equipment vendors.

Experience with composting is not necessary to use this guide. Some readers will have little or no experience with composting. Others will have some experience composting leaves and garden debris at home, or they may even have tried composting at their facilities. Finally, some will have experience separating materials for collection and transport to a commercial compost facility.

The guide was developed as an easy-to-follow, hands-on approach to help managers decide whether composting at their facility would be compatible with the budget, space, and other resources they have available. In other words, it will help you answer the question: Will composting work for us? The guide organizes technical information in a step-by-step format and uses information you provide to match your goals for waste diversion, cost savings, or end uses for compost to the many kinds of composting technologies available.

What is and is not covered?

The guide provides information needed to analyze and evaluate potential costs and benefits of composting at a wide variety of institutions and sites. It starts by asking you to gather composting at your facility could save information that will show how much money. This “avoided cost threshold” will establish a baseline budget to which you can add other potential benefits when comparing composting options.

Further, the guide will show you how to evaluate advantages and disadvantages of different levels of composting technology and develop recommendations about specific systems or methods. The guide also provides lists of general resources for further study.

What the guide does not do is teach composting. Learning more about composting basics may help some readers get more out of this guide, so we have included an introductory section about composting. Many excellent how to composting guides have already been written, so the last section provides references to additional sources of detailed information about the science and art of composting.

The guide does not promote or endorse any particular technology, system, or type of composting equipment. Instead, it was designed so you could understand the differences among systems and prepare your own recommendations.

Finally, and significantly, the guide does not provide the information needed to design or build a composting facility. Building a composting operation can be a complicated task. Once you have used this guide to narrow your decision to a level of technology and a specific method, you should consult other resources for help in building the composting facility. For some larger-scale facilities or those that involve regulatory issues, it would be appropriate to work with consultants or engineers experienced in composting. These can be identified by talking with managers at facilities who have done composting, or by contacting the local cooperative extension office, the Washington Department of Ecology, the Washington Organic Recycling Council, or other similar agencies or organizations. (See the resources listed in Section 11-Next Steps.)

Getting The Most From this Guide

We want this guide to meet your needs for a quick, easy-to-use tool for decision-making about composting. Following is a suggestion for getting the most from this guide:

•   Quickly scan the sections—Get a quick understanding of the information gathering and analysis phases and how they work together.  

•   Become familiar with the technology descriptions—The technology descriptions, contained in the following section, relate directly to the scorecard and to the detailed information about composting that you will find in other books. If you are unfamiliar with composting methods and want to learn more, review some of the books listed in the resources section.  

•   Get to know the scorecard—The scorecard will be used throughout the analysis phase, so become familiar with how it relates information from the different analyses to the different composting technologies. (If you are using an electronic version of this guide, you may want to print a copy of the scorecard to use throughout the process.)  

•   Gather necessary information using the forms provided—Once you have become familiar with the different parts of the guide, gather as much of the information called for in that section as possible. As you do the analyses, it will become clear how important the information is, so don’t skimp on this part of the process.  

•   Work through the analyses and the scorecard—Complete these sections, step-by-step. When you get through all the sections, the possibilities will begin to emerge.  

•   Review the trade-offs and develop a recommendation—Evaluating the different trade-offs can change the options you have available and possibly improve the cost-benefit analysis of a decision to start composting. Consider the opportunities you have and develop a recommendation that you can propose to the decision-makers in your organization. With the information you have gathered and the analysis you have completed, you will be ready to support your recommendation and move ahead.

Structure of the Guide

After a brief discussion of the potential benefits of composting, the guide follows a simple approach, used commonly by managers who must develop recommendations about major decisions. This process starts with gathering information about your specific situation, followed by using this information to complete a series of analyses designed to help you develop specific recommendations for your facility.

How to Use the Composting Scorecard

Professionals who work in the organic recycling industry understand how many possible solutions can be developed for a specific situation. They also understand how different tradeoffs can be made to arrive at different solutions.

To help you make sense of the different possibilities that result from your analyses, we have provided a simple scorecard to use as you complete the analyses in this guide. At the end of each analysis section, the guide describes which levels of technology may be preferred or eliminated according to the results of your analyses. Using the scorecard as you complete each section of the guide will provide a quick view of the emerging possibilities and the impact of various trade-offs.

How to Move Ahead After Completing this Guide

As you will discover from using this guide, composting is not a passive activity. It will require significant amounts of thought and management. Completing the steps in this guide will get you through the initial feasibility study/decision-making process. It will answer many of your questions and help you determine if you are ready for the challenge. If your organization decides to move ahead with composting, you’ll need to develop more specific plans for developing the site, purchasing equipment, training personnel, and using or marketing the compost product. Section 11–Next Steps will help you find resources you will need to follow-up on a positive decision about composting.

Composting Scorecard

When you complete each of the analyses in the guide, it will describe what levels of composting technology may be preferred or eliminated according to your results. Use this scorecard to keep track of the results. At the end of each section: 1) Cross out options that are eliminated. 2) Leave open all the options that are OK. 3) Circle any options that are preferred.

This section provides information about successful composting projects at institutions around North America. It also provides background on a few basics of composting needed to understand subsequent sections of the guide. For more information about how to do composting, refer to the publications listed in Section 11–Next Steps.

Why Compost?

Successes in mid-scale and on-site composting can be found all around the United States and Canada. As interest in waste diversion and recycling increased in the late 1980s and early 90s, interest in composting expanded as well. Much emphasis was placed on home composting and on large-scale, centralized composting. Mid-scale composting has been slower to develop. However, composting studies and industry trade journals provide considerable information about many success stories.

Zoos were among the first institutional success stories. The Woodland Park (Seattle) and Bronx (New York) zoos began “Zoo Doo” programs in the late 1980s. These programs focus on composting manures from herbivores, and they produce a good quality compost that is sold for premium prices because of its novelty. The Woodland Park Zoo composts about 600 tons of material each year, raising about $23,000 in revenue from sales, including the lucrative “holidoo” sale at Christmas. Landfill savings from the composting program top $60,000 annually.

Camps, schools, and universities have been another source of information and practical experience in mid-scale composting. In the early 90s, composting began at the Frost Valley YMCA in Claryville, NY. Each year, the facility composts 60 to 70 tons of pre- and post-consumer food waste, plus hundreds more of wood and yard debris, soiled paper, and other organic materials. The camp invested $200,000 in its aerated static pile compost facility, which produces compost for the camp greenhouse. The compost facility and greenhouse serve additionally as education opportunities. (See BioCycle, April 1991, pp. 42-44, plus other sources).

Several university composting operations have been profiled in industry journals (see BioCycle, July 1993, pp. 55-57). The following examples show the range of methods and scale of campus composting:

Washington State University in Pullman, WA, leads all others by composting the largest volume and the widest variety of organic materials, including food