Interview with the Evanston Valley Enterprises Founders (part 6)

Q: So, you said obtaining inputs is one of your bigger issues right now. If you had your druthers, what inputs would you like to see people bring you so that they can be recycled into usable compost?

Matt: So obviously we have plenty of trees, and plenty of wood chips. This helps to keep the tree scrap out of the landfills.  We still produce that through the tree division, and we were looking to make sure that stays going indefinitely. We've even got the next generation talking about coming into the operation.  Corn fodder makes really good compost.  When I first got into this, I reached out to local farmers, and I couldn't get any fodder.  Even if I just outright paid for it, nobody would sell it. They just want to till that right back into the soil. They've got a whole different method of building soils that well, I should say, of managing soil if you will, not even really building soil, but because of their practices, I can't get corn stalks.  Leaves are also really good.  But they seem to be harder as there are already people taking those.

Now, one of the biggest things that I have seen is a huge need for reducing landfills and increasing recycling of food waste.  I'd love to see food waste become part of our compost production.  Because it's a twofold benefit.  First, there is such a huge amount that just gets thrown away, whether it's the Walmart super centers, the local restaurants, the grocery stores, the convenience stores.  I mean, there is just food waste everywhere.  It just gets thrown in the garbage.  Second, if we can take that and utilize it, we get not only a great feed stock, but it also is going to help with our nitrogen source because food waste can be high in nitrogen. I've been noticing all these stands that are selling pumpkins around here right now, and I'm thinking, where are all those going to end up?  When the season's over and they haven't sold them?  And not even that, but then the homeowners, when they go to get rid of them, they'll throw them in the ditch or they throw them in the trash or whatever.  If there was just a way let people know that we are an alternative to adding to the waste stream.

Christmas trees would be another good source.  Chipped pine is a good input for composting.

Q: But with the Christmas trees, do you run into some contamination problems?

Matt: You could, you know, you're going to get somebody who didn't get all the light strand out of it or even some of the tinsel and all that, some of that stuff. Yeah. You could, you could run into that, but I think with minimal amount of that is, by the time you run it through your chipper, you're going to dissolve that down, it's going to go through the composting process. It goes through a screening process. But it will be minimal. Okay. So those are possibilities yet, but a lot of people aren't going to live trees anymore most people are going the artificial tree route. So that opportunity is going down. But people aren't eating less.

And, this is what I see, too. There's tree lots that have trees left over. You know, that's the easy, low hanging fruit to me.  Same with the other stands, you know, all these vegetable and pumpkin stands.  The things they can't sell, if it all got brought back to recycling. How much of that are you going to get people to bring to you?  Because, you know, they didn't sell it. They've already had a loss. They don't want to add more cost to it.  We could offer a pickup service, you know, like to a Christmas tree lot.  Hey, we'll pull it and we'll chip all your trees that you don't sell and you want to get rid of. It's easy for you, because it just goes away.  And then we just create a truckload of pine chips and then just bring them back here.  

Q: As I would understand your IDEM permit right now, I know EVE can't do food waste that would come from restaurants and grocery stores. But as far as anything that's left from a farm, it's raw vegetables, etc., are you good with composting those items?

Matt: We're permitted for vegetative Matter. We should be able to do all that stuff. I'm thinking the pumpkins, the trees. That's all considered organic.  We'd be able to do that because that fits our vegetative permit. Absolutely.

There's something else that we're not permitted for, but it's animal carcasses. INDOT, they have to go and pick-up all the dead animals off the road, or all these livestock farmers who have to dispose of their dead stock.  At one time, there was a big push for the turkey farmers. They had to switch over from their crude composting bins into literally building a whole other turkey house with a full concrete enclosure for doing their composting of their carcasses.  We are IDEM permitted to do this without the building investment, whereas they weren't permitted. They didn't have the proper drainage and capturing for water runoff that we are required to meet.