LOCAL COMPOSTING COMPANY JOINS RECYCLED MATERIALS PROGRAM

King County, Washington

The newest partner in King County's LinkUp program - designed to assist companies in using more recycled materials - is Cedar Grove Composting of Maple Valley. Currently, the county is focusing on five priority materials for recycling: yard trimmings, food residuals, paper, wood and electronics. Together, these materials account for nearly 54 percent of the waste in the county's landfill. Cedar Grove processes four of these five priority materials (all except electronics) in its composting process. The LinkUp team will work with Cedar Grove to help expand its customer base.

In the food residuals arena, Cedar Grove was taking material from a residential collection pilot launched by King County in 2002. Some 1,700 residents in Issaquah, Lake Forest Park, Redmond and Kirkland participated by diverting food scraps and soiled paper as well as yard trimmings. As a result of the pilot's success, Kirkland expanded its program to 45,000 households; Redmond was expected to expand as well (see "Composter Upgrades To Receive Postconsumer Food Residuals," February 2004). King County will undertake a commercial food residuals collection pilot soon.

The Maple Valley composting site processes about 25,000 tons of material in peak months, and is expecting to receive significantly increased food residuals volumes. It installed the GORE Cover Systems for composting the postconsumer food residuals. Cedar Grove sells approximately 500,000 bags of compost each year to home gardeners in addition to its commercial and municipal accounts. The company is opening a second yard trimmings composting facility in Everett this summer.