Organics Recycling Systems

Currently we have plenty of organic material or residuals (“organics”) available ready to be turned into value-added products, such as compost, biogas, engineered soils, and fuel, just to name a few.  Organics going to landfills constitute roughly 40% of our nation’s solid waste stream (EPA 2018).  Out of the food we purchase, 40% goes uneaten (NRDC 2017) and based on an analysis done in 2012, North Carolina produces approximately 1.2 million tons of food residuals (NCDENR 2012).  The state was also able to recover through food rescue, animal feeding, commercial composting, and anaerobic digestion 11% of the food destined for landfills (NCDEQ 2020).  These numbers clearly show that there is an open opportunity in the waste reduction and organics recycling markets.  Increasing the momentum in 2015, US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of Agriculture, and US Food and Drug Administration announced a goal to reduce food waste by half by 2030 as well as a National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics (EPA 2024).

In 2020, North Carolina's permitted compost facilities reported receiving more than 772,000 tons of organic material, creating approximately 277,321 tons of compost and 161,753 tons of mulch. To learn more about the North Carolina's organic material recycling and food recovery, see the North Carolina Organics Recycling Study.

Organic residuals are materials that the entity generating them does not have a need for, such as yard trimmings, restaurant food scraps, animal manures, biosolids, agricultural byproducts, and others.

As of 2020, NC had over 50 permitted composting facilities.  These facilities work in partnership with municipal solid waste departments, restaurants, schools, colleges, haulers, farmers, and landscapers to make the system work.

To turn organics into value-added products, the system must have each of the following on board:

1. Generators: they have an amount of organic materials that they do not have a need for, such as landscapers, restaurants, grocery stores, schools, colleges, special events, farms, food processors, offices, airports, correctional institutions, wastewater treatment plants, industrial food manufacturers, and others.
2. Haulers: they move the organics from the generator to the processors and are crucial to the success of a diversion program.  Organics haulers can be existing waste (trash) haulers or purely organics haulers.
3. Composters & Other Processors: they turn the organic residuals into value-added products such as mulch, compost, boiler fuel, biogas, and bio-based products.  These processes are achieved through the processes of grinding, composting, anaerobic digestion, and other microbiological processes.
4. Users: they have found an application for the products created by the composters or bio-based manufacturers, which can be compost blankets for erosion control, soil amendment for horticulture and gardening, compost socks for erosion control, mushroom-based packaging, and more.

To learn more about each, including starting food residual reduction and diversion programs, hauling organics, permitting composting facilities, and the different compost applications, and more details, please see the sections below.

Figure 1. Key Elements of the Organics Recycling Infrastructure

DEACS recycling staff are available to assist local and regional efforts in expanding or developing programs around waste reduction and organics recycling programs.