In-vessel systems are weatherproof and need not be covered, limit vermin attraction, and workers and sensitive components are not exposed to the composting atmosphere. Vessel systems are modular in design. This allows for flexibility in plant capacity and extension by simply adding additional units.

The enclosed U-shaped vessels have a central axial shaft. The tine bearing shaft and is periodically rotated to maintain porosity, achieve mixing and aerate the material. Shaft movement is computer controlled and, along with the feed-rate of waste, determines the retention time of material in the composter. Shaft rotation and aeration are under smart control. The units contain temperature and other sensors, and feedback from these enables the on-board computer to optimize processing.

All units are equipped with Internet connections to enable smooth software upgrades, remote monitoring and control, and facilitate troubleshooting. The rotation of the shaft along with feed rate can be used to regulate processing times allowing the quality of the final product to be manipulated. Net forward rotation affects retention time, total rotation controls aeration and mixing. Rapid pre-composting in as little as 10 days can achieve significant mass and volume reductions but the product requires extended maturation and curing. A more stable product can be achieved with composting times of 18-25 days.

The early bird doesn't always get to keep the worm; and food scraps would also be used in the production of "Global Worming;" a vermicomposting" process that is simply composting with worms. Red wigglers reproduce very quickly. It takes about 3 weeks for an egg to develop and as many as 20 little worms can be hatched from 1 worm egg. In 3 months they will start breeding making more and more hungry worms!

Red wigglers reproduce very quickly. It takes about three weeks for an egg to develop and as many as 20 little worms can be hatched from one worm egg. In three months they will start breeding making more and more hungry worms!

Red Wiggler worms can consume their weight in organic material every two days. A bin that has half a kilogram of worms needs to be supplied with half a kilogram of compost every 2 days! The worm then excretes a soil-nutrient material called "worm castings". The harvested compost is so rich that it would burn plants if used straight as potting soil, so it is mixed half and half with peat moss or soil and than can be added directly to soil in a garden.

"Global Worming Worm Tea" is created through a brewing process which runs distilled water through Red Wiggler worm castings, the nutritious elements and microorganisms of the castings are captured in a concentrated liquid form. By using Global Worming Worm Tea on your plants and gardens, you put healthy microorganisms back into the soil where they thrive and multiply.

While Global Worming Worm Tea is in a concentrated form, it is an all-natural soil amendment, so you cannot over use or burn out your plants. Global Worming Worm Tea can be sprayed directly onto your plants and will act as an insecticide. It can be added to a compost pile to accelerate the composting process. Larger quantities of Global Worming Worm Tea can also be used to enhance the soil quality of your lawn.

African Night Crawlers Worms and European Night Crawlers Worms can also be used to make compost tea; and these wormy wonders at work are worth their weight in gold! All of these worms also make the ultimate fishermen bait and trolling worms, which would increase our profit when sold. Sudbury has 330 lakes within the city limits, and like fish to bait; thousands of local sport fisher(wo)men would buy up our fat juicy global worms!

You can recycle many types of glass. Glass food and beverage containers can be reused and recycled an infinite number of times. In fact, only light bulbs, ceramic glass, dishes, glass mirrors and window glass can't be recycled. Glass is made from soda ash, sand, and limestone. If it's thrown away, it stays there indefinitely because glass never breaks down into its original ingredients.

The best way to deal with glass trash is recycling. Unlike paper, burning glass in Waste to Energy plants is not a good alternative to recycling. Glass does not provide any heat energy for making steam or electricity. Paper burns in a Waste to Energy plant; glass just melts. Landfilling glass recovers none of its value either. So, recycling is usually the best choice.

To be recycled, glass is sorted by color, crushed into small pieces, and melted down into a liquid. Then, it is molded into new glass containers. Recycling glass is a relatively good energy saver. Using recycled glass to make new glass products requires 40 percent less energy than making it from all new materials. It saves energy because crushed glass, called cullet, melts at a lower temperature than the raw materials used to make glass. And unlike paper, glass jars and bottles can be recycled over and over again. The glass doesn’t wear out.

Old glass is easily made into new glass jars and bottles or into other glass products like fiberglass insulation. Sometimes recycled glass is used as road-construction materials like back fill, or mixed with asphalt and made into glass-phalt paving, thus several different product manufacturing plants could be established.

Paper was invented in China around 105 A.D. by T'sai Lung, who was a Chinese court official. Wasps taught him how to make paper. Wasps chew fibres and weeds into a kind of paste or mash, spit it out to form the walls and chambers of their hive, and when it dries it is a kind of paper sculpture. In the 6th century when the Chinese lost to the Arabs at the Battle of Samarkand, captured paper makers were forced to share their craft with their new masters. A thousand years later, the art of paper making reached Europe.

Paper is a bit like oxygen; it's all around us and almost nobody notices. Paper is one of the most important and useful materials man has ever created. Scientists thought that computers would decrease paper consumption but the opposite has happened. Personal computers and printers account for 155 billion sheets of paper used per year worldwide. It takes 19 full grown trees to make one tonne of paper. By recycling 54 kilograms (about 119 pounds) of newspapers, you can save the equivalent of one tree from being cut down.

Canadians are among the world’s largest consumers of paper products. Not just trees, but entire forests, ecosystems, watersheds and the homes of thousands of plant and animal species go into garbage cans when paper is wasted. Pre-consumer waste refers to waste paper that has been converted and perhaps printed but which has been discarded prior to reaching the consumer. This includes printer off-cuts, envelope trimmings and rejected stocks. Post-consumer waste is paper that is recovered after it has been used as a consumer item. It includes waste paper from offices and homes, old newspapers and packaging. Recycling one tonne of paper saves 7,000 gallons of water and 4,100 kwh of electricity, thereby reducing air and water pollution by 50%.

Typically, newspaper can be recycled 5-7 times. Each time it is recycled, its fibers become shortened. Eventually, they become too short to make good paper. At the recycling center, the collected paper is wrapped in tight bales and transported to a paper mill, where it will be recycled into new paper. We have a paper plant in Espanola; a mere 40 miles from Sudbury. Once the paper no longer qualifies to make new paper it can be incinerated to make electricity.

When newspaper enters the recycling process at a de-inking mill, it is washed in a solution of warm water and chemicals that turns it into a kind of mush. Through a combination of spinning and screening the mush, most ink and other unwanted particles are removed. Deinking also removes fillers, clays, and fiber fragments. It is then air treated in a flotation cell causing any remaining particles to float to the surface. After one last washing and screening, the mush is bleached and, if necessary, mixed with pulp from trees. This mixture is then squeezed to remove the water after which it is dried and pressed and is readied for shipment.

The unusable material left over, mainly ink, plastics, filler and short fibers, is called sludge. Deinking at Cross Pointe’s Miami, Ohio mill results in 22 pounds of sludge for every 100 pounds of wastepaper recycled. The sludge would be burned, in limited amounts, to create energy, &/or used as a fertilizer by local farmers, as value is recovered from the waste.

Some types of paper, such as those using colored inks and glossy finishes, are not easily recycled and would be burned for their energy content. Almost all paper can be recycled today, but some types are harder to recycle than others. Papers that are waxed, pasted, gummed or papers that are coated with plastic or aluminum foil are usually not recycled because the process is too expensive.

Even papers that are recycled are not usually recycled together. Different grades of paper are recycled into different types of new products. Old newspapers are usually made into new newsprint, egg cartons, cereal cartons or paperboard. Old corrugated boxes are made into new corrugated boxes or paperboard.

High-grade white office paper can be made into almost any new paper product, stationery, newsprint, or paper for magazines and books, writing tablets, photocopy paper, letterhead paper, notebook paper, paper grocery bags, corrugated boxes, envelopes, magazines, and cartons, newspaper, gift wrap, paper towels and toilet paper, thus several different product manufacturing plants could be established. However, we’re actually better at finding a use for old paper than we are at getting paper to a recycling bin: Our paper mills import 2.2 million tonnes of recovered paper from the United States every year.

State-of-the-Art Waste to Energy Plant in Denmark

One simple and important dimension of environmental pollutants is whether they accumulate over time or tend to dissipate soon after being emitted. The classic case of non-cumulative pollutant is noise; as long as the source operates noise is emitted into the surrounding air, but as soon as the source is shut down, the noise stops. At the other end of the spectrum we have pollutants that cumulate in the environment in nearly the same amounts as they are emitted. Plastics are a cumulative type of pollutant.

The search for a degradable plastic has been going on for decades, but so far plastic is a substance that decays very slowly by human standards; thus, what we dispose of will be in the environment permanently. Because plastics are made from petroleum and natural gas, they are excellent sources of energy for Waste to Energy plants. This is especially true since plastics are not as easy to recycle as steel, aluminum, or paper.

Plastics almost always have to be hand sorted and making a product from recycled plastics may cost more than making it from new materials. Today, however, new "eco-designed" Optical Sorting Technology from Pellenc Selective Technologies sort plastics and other curbside recyclables in a more effective and efficient manner, which is great news for end market manufacturers. The automated process completely deconstructs your trash and separates it out into the biomass fraction, the inorganic fraction, the synthetic fraction that is appropriate for energy and also the household hazardous waste fraction, which shouldn't go into an energy process. There are a variety of other commingled separation systems for screening and separating mixed waste stream materials as well.

When Alexander Parkes developed the first man-made plastic in the 1860s, he had no idea of the role that it would come to play in our everyday lives. Over the years, plastics have led to many advances in cutting-edge technologies. Clothing manufacturers are now using "Polyester Fibers" made out of plastic soda bottles that are sorted, sliced, diced, washed, heated, palletized, and extruded. Malden Mills used about 140 million recycled bottles in one year (about 15 bottles per jacket) for its popular outerwear fleece fabric, the warm and cozy "Polartec." Recycled plastic is going into making hiking boots by "NatureTex." Patagonia makes a recycled plastic bottle fabric called "Synchilla" while green bottles are being spun into "Cloverfill fluff" that's filling the Rising Star futons. And that T-shirt you’re wearing? It could also be made from recycled soft-drink bottles--it takes about 14 600-millilitre bottles to make an extra large.

The effect your clothes have on the environment is much larger than you would think and far more serious then you might believe. According to a report done by Cambridge University researchers, appropriately titled “Well Dressed?,” clothes are a large and growing source of carbon emissions.

Think about it: The energy used to produce raw materials. The trucks used to transport raw materials to manufacturers. The factories full of machines that make your clothes. The employees drive or bus to work. The trucks that bring your clothes to the stores. The car or bus you drive or ride to go shopping to buy the clothes. The washing machine and dryer that clean your clothes. All of them spew carbon emissions. You’re practically emitting carbon just from walking down the street fully clothed. At the same time, we hear more about poor working conditions in clothing factories, so what is an environmentally savvy consumer to do?

The mantra of businesses targeting and converting consumers towards sustainable purchasing patterns has long been "small steps make all the difference." Shopping in an "ecologically-correct" fashion makes $ense, and "buying recycled “closed loop” “eco-fashion” manufactured products are ways to support the market for re-refined lines of clothing. The more individuals and businesses buy "environmentally preferable" products the more this new market would expand. “Eco-label eco-clothing” and “eco-jewelry” make great “eco-gifts” when “eco-taining” your like minded “eco-friends!”

There is also a wide range of other products made from recycled plastic; because plastic truly is fantastic! This includes but not limited to, bioreactor covers, polyethylene bin liners and carrier bags; PVC sewer pipes, flooring and window frames; building insulation board; video and compact disc cassette cases, plastic lumber, picnic tables, fencing, garden furniture, playground equipment, water butts, garden sheds, composters, seed trays, fibre filling for sleeping bags and duvets, and a variety of office accessories; thus several different product manufacturing plants could be established. However, to be economically viable, plastic processors require large quantities of recycled plastics, manufactured to tightly controlled specification at a competitive price in comparison to that of virgin polymer.

Auto manufacturers have also gotten on the bandwagon. Ford Canada uses recycled pop bottles to make door padding and trunk trim; battery housings for accelerator pedals; and industrial carpeting for its engine-fan modules. Canadian-made Ford trucks, Freestar and Crown Victoria’s contain more than 80% recyclable parts while the industry average is 75%. General Motors has also increased the amount of recycled materials it uses in new cars. Canada auto manufacturers are less than 4 hours away and, with a build in customer and built in reverse supply chain dynamic, next to no plastics would need to be incinerated.

Aseptic or Tetra-Pac Drink boxes are made up of three material types: paper, an aluminum lining, and a plastic coating. Each container goes through a hydro-pulping process that separates the different material types. The resulting paper pulp is then used to make cardboard boxes of all shapes, sizes and colors, as well as toilet paper. Gable top cartons are made only of paper and plastic. Each container goes through a hydro-pulping process that separates the different material types. The resulting paper pulp is then used for all kinds of industrial paper products.

State-of-the-Art Waste to Energy Plant in Germany

Canada also discards 30 million tires each year and all tires should also be sent to Sudbury for recycling, which would create even more jobs. Our “Tire City” “eco-centre” would produce the new “Black Gold;”“Tire Derived Fuel” (TDF). "Reverse Polymusization" is used to reduce tires to oil, carbon black and steel. EWNC system is designed to accommodate 3000 tires or 27 tonnes per day. From one 20-pound tire, 7.5 pounds of carbon black and 2 pounds of steel are recovered yielding a minimum 47.5 percent recycling rate. The remainder of the tire can be used in the production of electricity.

On a weight basis, the energy content of scrap rubber is 15 to 20% greater than that of coal; capturing the energy from tires releases fewer contaminants per unit energy than burning coal at thermoelectric generating stations. From every 3000 tires or 27 tonnes, 3 tonnes of steel, 7.5 tonnes of oil, and 11.5 tonnes of carbon black is produced.

Steel is sold for recycling. Used oil, or "sump oil" as it is sometimes called, can be cleaned of contaminants so it can be recycled again and again. Carbon black is used for new rubber production or other feedstock. Tire production uses 65 to 70% of the world's carbon black production, which represents more than 6,800,000 tonnes annually. Carbon black prices range from 0.02 to 0.60 cents U.S. and this would generate a revenue stream from carbon black sales of 3 to 9 million $ U.S. every year.

We can get a barrel of oil "plus" gas from one of these tires without using fire or creating harmful emissions

Only a few years ago, re-refined oil production was limited by numerous technical, economic and marketing constraints. With increased market demands for environmentally preferable products and improved re-refining technology, the availability of re-refined oil is expected to grow. Today's re-refined motor oil is no different from virgin motor oils. Re-refined oils are subject to the same stringent standards that apply to virgin oil-based products. Auto manufacturers have studied re-refined oil lubricants comparing them to virgin oils for performance criteria critical to engine life, and found re-refined motor oils and virgin motor oils equal in performance.

Lubrication is a fact of life; and government guidelines for purchasing lubricating oils should require "all" federal, provincial and local agencies and contractors that use government funds to purchase such products to the maximum extent practicable; unless the product is not available. This mandate would reach to fleets of buses, police cars, boats, motorcycles, ambulances, Canada Post vehicles, tractors, dump trucks and garbage trucks.

A "Greening the Government" policy would provide a built in customer base, and the policy would state, and direct, that “no federal, provincial or local agencies shall purchase, sell or arrange for the purchase of virgin petroleum motor vehicle lubricating oils when re-refined oils are reasonably available and meet the vehicle manufacturer’s recommended performance standards.” California is one of the leaders in purchasing re-refined oil closing the recycling loop.

Recycled tires also spend their retirement supporting national sports—literally. More than 50 of our country’s playing fields—including Toronto’s Rogers Centre, Edmonton’s Clarke Stadium and Vancouver’s B.C. Place Stadium—feature FieldTurf, an artificial surface that’s created from spent tires—40,000 per field. This innovation out of Montreal is low-maintenance and easier on players’ bodies than other surfaces, whether natural or artificial. FieldTurf also contains rubber from running shoes. Tires could also be melted down and mixed with the incinerators bottom ash to make vulcanized rubber, which is used to patch cracks in asphalt roadways around the world.

Shredded rubber can also be used to make doormats and shoe soles made out of tire retread shredding, like the ones being sold at Zona in New York City, boot mats, rubber traffic cones and delineator bases, rubber parking stops and impact parking curbs, rubber speed bumps and humps, rubber roofs, rubber sidewalks, rubber playground areas, and as a base in outdoor hockey rinks, sports flooring, and on walking/hiking trails, thus several different product manufacturing plants could be established.

Old running shoes helped surface a new sports complex in the Toronto neighbourhood of Malvern, featuring a running track, basketball court and soccer pitch. A Rubber Research & Development Centre could also be created on the premises.

Continued after jump...

[ 09 July 2007: Message edited by: Sudbury ]