Black Earth Groton CASE STUDY

Black Earth is a leading force in New Englands emerging food waste diversion efforts. They work with municipalities, schools, homes and businesses to provide composting collection and processing infrastructure where it is otherwise non-existent. After several years of hauling, they realized how important it was to their business and ideology to also process the organics that they hauled. At this point, they reached out to GMT to help them design small, decentralized compost facilities with excellent odor control so that they could be located proximally to the towns that they are hauling from.

Groton was the first facility GMT helped Black Earth design under this model. The system consists of three positive sparger aeration zones (one for receiving material and two for active composting) and an enclosed receiving area. The air from the receiving and composting process is sucked into overhead ducting and treated in a biofiltration system removing roughly 95% of the odorous compounds and emissions prior to being emitted to the environment. After a few weeks within the building compost is cured outside in windrows. The facility has been operating in Groton for several years without issue; saving landfill space, improving soil health and reducing methane emissions without disturbing the community.