It’s all black, about 10 metres long and two metres high and slowly turning Salt Spring Island’s commercial organic waste into a steaming-hot, rich soil-booster.
It’s the new composter on the Southern Gulf Islands’ largest and most populous island — the product of years of work to solve a problem that small communities across B.C. face: how to deal with offal from meat producers and other compostable waste from businesses like restaurants and grocery stores?
“So make use of waste and not let it rot or create greenhouse gases …Â but make a valuable resource of it,” said Georg Janssen with the Salt Spring Abattoir Society.
Located at the Burgoyne Valley Community Farm, the composter has been up and running for about a year and is still being perfected to run at its full capacity.
It currently accepts around 20 tonnes of waste from the local abattoir and produces a soil amendment — a processed organic material that, while different in texture and nutrient makeup from traditional compost, is still effectively used to enrich the soil across 90 plots on the 65-acre farm.Â
Compost pours out of a device on Salt Spring Island, which locals have implemented to divert organic waste from having to be shipped off the island or buried. (Martin Diotte/CBC News)
Before the composter came online, organic commercial waste, such as that from the abattoir, had to be taken away by producers and was often buried in the ground and shipped off the island, all of which creates greenhouse gases.
The composter, which aims to accept 60 tonnes of waste a year and produce around 150 cubic metres of compost, solves that problem, along with not needing to truck in compost for agricultural operations.
It’s something farmers and community members on the island are proud of.
“We can slowly make a long list of successes that’s coming out of this and the value-added it’s creating for the island,” said Bayan Harvey, who helps operate the composter while also running his Kumusha Farms, which produces hydroponic fresh lettuce, herbs and watercress.
The Capital Regional District, Salt Spring Island Farmland Trust Society (Farmland Trust), Salt Spring Abattoir Society, and Salt Spring Island Community Services Society all came together to figure out how to make a composter project viable.
In 2023, they were awarded a $170,000 grant from the provincial government and then raised another $120,000 from federal and other grants to get the composter rolling.
‘Pretty remarkable’
The Capital Regional District (CRD) owns the facility and leases the land from the Farmland Trust while the abattoir runs the composter.
The power for the project is supplied by solar panels installed by Salt Spring Community Energy in a field behind the barn where the composter is housed.
“It’s pretty remarkable,” said Gary Holman, a CRD director who has lived on Salt Spring Island for more than 30 years.
“It’s how we get things done on Salt Spring, through that collaboration.”
Solar panels at the Burgoyne Valley Community Farm on Salt Spring Island power the island’s commercial composter. (Martin Diotte/CBC News)
In addition to getting the composter to produce compost that has the right composition and nutrients, Holman and CRD also still have work to do to change bylaws so that local grocery stores and restaurants will be able to have the composter process their organic waste.
That is expected sometime before the end of the year.
Islands Trust will also have to rezone the property where the composter is so that commercial sales of the compost will be allowed in order for the project to generate revenue, said Holman.
He said the project is unique and could be replicated in other places once it’s running at full capacity and producing good-quality compost.
“I believe that Saltspring is the only local government within the regional district that is actually composting at this scale. So I do think we could provide a model.”