Check it out. We are the proud new operators of the Earth Tub in-vessel compost system from Green Mountain Technologies. As you can imagine, we’re pretty stoked.
Jim’s excited too.
Meeting of the minds: Guilford Sustainability Coordinator Jim Dees and our Executive Chef Anthony Tisdale discuss the logistics of getting all our kitchen waste through this bad boy.
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Here's a decent shot of the innards. That auger is turned by a motor and rotates around the tub by a hand crank for mixing. Aeration is provided by a blower in the bottom which draws air through the compost and out of the attached biofilter.
Stay tuned to Guilford Green for more pictures and info about how this thing works.
Congrats, please keep us posted. I am curious about why the water can’t just be filtrated through the bottom of the vessel like with the smaller “green cone” system. Is it a volume issue or something else. I am also curious about why it doesn’t come with a solar power system. That would make it alot easier to site.
Kim,
I suppose the water could be filtrated. The drainage system is currently set up to make the system completely closed at least until we get the health inspector’s approval. Once we get that cleared I’ll probably just drain into a five gallon bucket or something so it can be dumped back into the system. Since we are pulping all of the food waste, essentially removing most of the water weight, there really isn’t a significant amount of leachate coming out of the unit.
And I would love to see it hooked up to a solar array, but to answer your question I think it would be cost prohibitive especially since the unit is already quite expensive. Green Mountain Technologies is in the business of making in-vessel composters, not manufacturing solar panels. But we have definitely thrown around the idea of hooking it up to a solar array, and again I would love to see it happen. Thanks for your input and stay tuned!
Glad to see that you guys are enjoying the unit! I’m one of the members of the GMT team and just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you on the really impressive accomplishments recounted in this blog, and to offer our support if there’s anything we can do to help.
As far as a solar array, we are, indeed, not experts at solar. Our head engineer has, since 1992, been designing composting systems to large and small installations all over the world. We’re a small company of waste stream fanatics–PV systems are, as the business world would say, not exactly one of our “core competencies.” We would, of course, be SUPER excited to see Guilford make PV happen–if it does, please send us photos!
Thanks again, I look forward to following your progress!