- The state of Wyoming invited an expert from the state of Maine to travel 2000 miles here to Glenrock to talk about compost and the big impact it can have on industry, the environment, the economy, and local government on a bigger scale than you've probably imagined.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming, PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

(cheerful music) Composting is familiar to many people at its basic level using piled grass clippings or leaves, for example, to make a dirt like substance.

At the bottom of the pile that helps potted plants or garden vegetables grow better.

But there's more to composting than that, a lot more.

In fact, Mark King and Jody Weikart say composting at the industrial level can be a fiscal boon for Wyoming and its local governments, not to mention the agricultural and environmental benefits, including the potential to combat chronic wasting disease.

And both of today's Wyoming Chronicle guests say the sooner large scale composting becomes standard practice in land use management statewide, the better for everyone.

And Wyoming State government is listening.

I'm here today in Glenrock, Wyoming, with two people who are experts in a particular type of solid waste management, we'll call it, Jody Weikart from what's your agency?

- Wyoming.

DEQ.

- Wyoming, DEQ, department of Environmental Quality.

And Mark King, who's here from a visitor from the east, as we say, state of Maine, two time zones away, what, 2000 miles, at least from Wyoming.

But you're an expert in composting.

And by composting I don't mean this sort of master gardener kind of workshop that maybe we've all seen.

You're talking about composting on a much larger scale, a much wider variety of material than we might be used to.

You've got big ideas for it, I think there's a big role to play for it and that there ought to be correct.

- Yes.

I came here to help set up a program.

And in essence we're trying to bring leaf and yard composting with a lean towards food scrap composting, and do it large scale in Wyoming and bring everybody together and get several state agencies to start working as partners and hopefully develop a phenomenon that keeps going on.

- Why should we be doing more composting and on a bigger scale?

- Well, a lot of states, including Wyoming, have limited landfill capacity.

And a lot of the material that's going into the landfills is not really suitable for landfills.

and to benefit our communities by providing nutrients to improve soil health and vitality.

And instead, it's ending up in the landfill where all it does is break down and rot and just cause all kinds of problems.

- It decomposes eventually.

- [Mark] Yes.

- But we can do better with that.

- Absolutely.

- Decomposing with a purpose is what we're talking about.

- 40% of our waste stream across the country is food scraps and other organic material.

And if we can capture that and move that towards higher and better uses, such as composting or feeding hungry people, hungry animals, or even not producing it in the first place, by shopping smarter, we would be doing the world a favor.

- So we're talking about benefits not just in my garden plot, but a landfill benefits related to the economy, I presume.

- Absolutely.

- The environment, soil, land use, soil quality, water quality, a wide variety of stuff that you've made it your business to identify.

- Absolutely.

One of my favorite sayings is that when you waste food, you waste every bit of the energy that went into producing it.

Tilling the soil, the planting the crops, fertilizing the crops, harvesting the crops, bringing them to production, getting them packaged, sending them off to market.

All that takes energy, time, and money.

And when we compost, we help return those nutrients back to the soil and close the loop.

- Jody, what's Wyoming's interest in bringing Mark here from the East coast?

Tell us about this.

- Our solid waste community has asked us to learn how to compost.

It's important that to them to learn how to do it.

And we thought, "Why not bring the best in the business to Wyoming to do that?"

The association of state and territorial solid waste management officials actually sponsored Mark to come all the way to Wyoming.

- What makes you such an expert on composting?

- I've been very fortunate.

I've had an awesome career that's taken me all over the world.

And honestly, when I started this, I was just looking for something, a niche that I could occupy.

And when I started doing it, I realized how cool it was and how important it was.

And just over the years I've done some really incredible projects.

What is compost?

Can it be defined?

Compost is the result of an organic biological degradation process.

It is most simply a soil amendment that brings health and vitality to the soil.

And I liken when I talk about it to a paramedic, defibrillating someone who is not breathing and their heart is stopped.

When you add compost to your soil, you bring it right back to life.

It's pretty incredible.

- One of the realities of much of Wyoming, which is there isn't great topsoil around.

And when you're making compost, which you do make, sort of making your own topsoil, right?

- Yeah.

Could you imagine having a world where every single one of our communities had ready-made soil amendments that they could just go down the street and harvest and use for their gardens, use for their yards, use for the animal park, used for the state parks to use on our highways.

Wouldn't that be a wonderful world to live in?

And that's what we're trying to do with this training, is give folks the tools to be able to produce compost in their local communities.

- We've probably encountered compost all the time, even without trying to make it, if I have some grass clippings and the next year I look and there's this sort of dirt under it that wasn't there before.

It's just you use the term as we were watching this field demonstration, composting wants to happen.

- Absolutely.

- So what you're here to do is make it happen faster, bigger, better.

- Exactly.

Once we optimize the process, composting just happens faster and quicker.

But what I told the students today is, no matter what you do, you can't make a bad compost pile.

It's just gonna take longer to happen.

And that's the beautiful part of it.

- What are the basics of composting that people can do to enhance and speed?

- Well, the first thing you can do is get compatible ingredients.

And we try to match the carbon and nitrogen to a ratio of 20 to 30 to one.

Once we get that set up, then we try to get the right moisture, the right structure, we call it porosity.

We want to have airflow in the pile.

And then when we get all those optimized, we just allow it to happen and then we turn it and mix it occasionally to help keep the process going.

- So this sounds pretty scientific, but for most people wanting to do it, and I might say most people, again, I'm not just talking about someone who's trying to grow better tomatoes.

Oh, that's a great use for it.

But people who are trying to not fill up the landfills quicker than we need to or trying to put their own land use better, trying to dispose of maybe livestock waste or animal carcasses even, what you can do is tell us, we'll begin, this is a ma a good example of some material which will give you that balance that the scientific percentages and elements that you talked about.

Don't worry so much about figuring a test tube.

Just make a pile of this in a layer of this and layer this and it'll happen.

The compost exposure that I've had at the small consumer level, discouraged is how I would put it.

Some of the things that you encourage and one of those is the carcasses of lost animals.

Animal mortality is the term I believe.

Using a body of a lamb that dies during a cold snap in the spring can be composted and ought to be, you think?

- Yes, absolutely.

As long as the material is hot and active, you can put pretty much anything in it.

I've composted cows, I've composted seals, I've composted goats, composted pigs.

And I think my favorite thing I composted was an emu, - Including the bones?

- Well for the birds, yes.

For cows and other animals.

It takes a while longer.

But we have found that even after six to eight weeks, the bones are pitted.

- Really?

- So they're starting to break down and over time they can, but what most people do is, they screen the bones out, grind it, and pulverize and make a bone meal.

- Yeah, I think every direction for planting a tree has put in a scoop of bone meal.

- Starting in 2022.

We actually started our first training event ever, our first ever workshop.

And it was specifically for animal mortality composting and offal which is the byproducts of meat processing.

And we actually have numerous meat processors here in Wyoming that are composting their own offal site.

And we also have solid waste facilities who landfills, who could just put it right in their cell.

They actually are choosing to compost that material and they're using it as a cover material at the landfill.

One of our facility actually compost between 25 and 35 tons of animal mortality and offal every week.

- The understandable, I suppose, resistance to that concept to my way of thinking might actually be eased somewhat.

If you don't like to have to deal with these animal mortality as you're talking about, maybe this would be a better way to deal with it than digging a big trench and pushing it all in.

Because I don't know what happens underground exactly.

But if you have a big ditch that's full of this kind of material that's probably not great to use of that soil.

If you think you're gonna grow something there, you might be surprised of what happens.

- What we find is that when you bury animals, one of two things happens.

Either they mummify and they'll be that way for years and years and years.

- Really?

- Or they discharge a lot of liquid and that liquid has a chance to get into groundwater.

'Cause these burial pits are six to eight feet deep and in most places that gets into the water table and it's just not a good use.

And whenever you bury animals, if you try to sell that property, you have to claim where those barrel pits are.

And that can often turn a buyer off.

- I don't know what state law is in Wyoming, but I know in some states, even if you buried a pet on your property, you're supposed to report that and at least show where it was.

I can understand that people wouldn't wanna put their nice big dog in a compost.

Even when they would think they wouldn't want to.

But even if you look at it from that emotional way- - Actually some of our solid waste facilities do take that into consideration when they do compost someone's pet, they'll actually create the bed, which is a couple feet of wood chip, sawdust, that sort of thing.

And they'll actually have it in a quiet place at the facility and they'll actually place the animal and let the family say goodbye to their beloved horse or their dog.

And then it's just a nice way to sort of do an aboveground burial for your animal.

- One of the big issues in Wyoming and throughout the west, maybe throughout the nation, is chronic wasting disease, which is a terrible thing.

And it's affecting deer herds in particular.

I'm assuming, I mean many of these deaths occur in very remote places and I dunno how practical some of what you're talking about would be, but potentially certainly that would be an opportunity.

- We are talking about that right now.

I'm a strong believer of composting mortalities.

The chronic wasting disease is due to a prion, which is a misfolded protein that upsets the neurological system of the animal and causes them to exhibit some very bizarre behaviors.

I believe because it is a protein that composting would help to eliminate it because it is considered to be so destructive and invasive.

USDA is not given permission for that to occur, but they've allowed projects to occur to look at it.

And we want to do one here in Wyoming where we actually use composting to try and get rid of it.

- I would think that would be very welcome.

How do you feel about that idea?

- So there's actually been a study that's already happened in Wyoming.

Our Game and Fish folks did that study and they did see a reduction in the prions in the compost, but not total elimination.

And so Mark has some interesting ideas, using some hotter compost, some compost that has all the activity in it already.

And using that to see if we could see an even greater decrease in those prions in the final compost.

- So you even start the composting with that animal, you add it to a really hot pile already?

Is that what you're talking about?

- We'd build a bed of hot active compost, we'd put the animals on top and then cover them with hot active compost.

And I believe that'll get to the further level because the previous study used sawdust and sawdust doesn't have a lot of energy, but hot active compost does.

And I think we can take it to the goal line.

- Did you tell me as well that you've even gone so far or seen it taken so far as to involve whale in composting?

- Absolutely.

When I first started doing composting back in the early '90s, the Department of Marine Resources in Maine had a big whale that got beached.

It was a 39 footer sperm whale.

And they asked me if I would come and help out because under our rules, marine animals and wildlife are considered solid waste.

Domestic animals are considered agricultural waste.

So I was invited to come and help them.

And when they did the necropsy to see what killed the whale, they cut it into little tiny pieces and they wanted to know what to do with it.

And there was a compost facility on the island where they were doing the necropsy.

So I arranged to have that happen and it became a thing.

So now every whale and other animals, marine mammals go down, they're composted.

- We have any whales to deal with in Wyoming recently?

- I don't think so.

- I don't think so.

But there are big animals that are not quite whale sized.

What sort of reception do you get when you conduct a workshop?

I mean, people come to a workshop like this because they're interested.

Is there resistance to this at all or is it mostly embraced?

- I don't think so.

I'm just a big kid, so I'm very enthusiastic and I like to think it's contagious.

So I think people maybe they look at me as, "Wow, he's really into some strange things."

But at the same time, I think they like the fact that I really love what I do and I think that that helps the lesson.

- And we heard from a few of the facilities just today, we had about 40 people that we trained today.

And I think the majority walked away saying, "I wanna expand my composting operation, or I wanna start composting."

- Yeah, that's the feeling I got in my little exposure to, again, just at the sort of consumer level, hearing about it it's something you want to try.

Because you realize it can be done.

It strikes me as well that it might be something that can serve as sort of a bridge in these divides that seem to oftentimes almost ruin any sort of a discussion because you have to line up on and take a side over something in a political basis almost.

I'd hope.

And I would imagine you don't find that.

- No.

I find that when I get into a situation where it becomes political, I break it down to the most simplistic form and say, "We can take this and convert it into something beneficial or we can fight about it."

And usually people go for the simplistic route.

- Let's not fight about it.

- [Mark] Exactly.

- What a concept.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- I've been picking of a rock here.

We can't compost this.

Right?

- [Mark] Correct.

- But other, I mean the but the gamut of stuff you say any organic material now.

- Anything that was once alive.

- Was once alive.

So something as big as a redwood to a tadpole and all in between.

You've got a thermometer that we saw down there that was three feet long and you told us the temperature is, that's one of the things that the manager of the operation does have to pay attention to if you want it to work better.

- What I tell everyone is to take temperatures at the one foot and the three foot level in their pile.

The one foot is where the aerobic activity occurs.

The inner core is where the pile is growing and building and happening.

When the temperature between the one foot and the three foot is more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit, the pile needs to be flipped.

And every time we turn it, we bring the inside to the hot aerobic area.

And so over the course of six to eight weeks, we may turn the pile six or seven times and then that results in everything being composted equally.

- Now if I'm at home, I could do that with my shovel and my rake.

And we've seen these, usually high cost things where you can turn a crank and sort of tumble it.

I'm not trying to discourage or encourage the sale of a particular product, but we really don't need one of those, right?

- No, it'll happen no matter what.

But I have two types of people that I deal with when they want a compost at home, those that want it now, and those that can set it and forget it and see it next year, the ones that want it now, the hand cranks do compost faster.

You can take your compost bin and turn it and make it compost faster.

And then there's the others that just wanna pile it up and I'll see you next fall.

- Because if you want it to be that way, it's the ultimate low maintenance- - Exactly.

- Operation.

I covered up a tree stump.

I remember that I had cut and it was still there and I didn't know what to do with it.

And I exhausted myself with an ax chopping the heck out of it.

And so I buried it in some grass clippings and some dirt and the snow.

And that was in about probably September.

And by spring it wasn't there anymore.

I mean it's just, the demonstrations of it are awesome, it's almost like magic except it's the opposite of magic and absolute predictable scientific thing.

Practically speaking.

And we're talking about these bigger uses at the commercial or the industrial scale.

What's the biggest compost pile you could do before it becomes too much to handle it the right way?

- Well there is a limit to the height of a pile.

We like to have it not exceed eight feet.

Because what happens is that when you get above eight feet, the weight of the compost will compress the core.

- And you want this porous nature to it.

- Yeah.

And what happens is that when that core is compressed, the pile wants to breathe from the sides, but the core is what drives it.

It pulls the oxygen in and then it shoots it up through the pile out the chimney they call it.

And if we compress it, you don't get that action anymore.

So I try to get about eight feet max and a 16 feet wide for a two to one slope.

'Cause that's also gonna shed water, but allow the best profile for oxygen penetration.

- So when I was thinking, "Well, we're not gonna be able to have a an acre compost pile, but you could do 500 of the piles you just described us.

We're here in 2025.

Let's look at 2030 ideally.

And you're in a management position and have a national leadership role in this field as well in Wyoming, five years from now, based on what we're doing here, what would be an ideal scenario in your eyes?

- Seeing more folks composting.

It's really that simple part of the trainer, we're gonna keep doing this workshop.

It's gonna happen every year for quite a while.

And then we'll probably do it every other year.

We're really hoping that our facilities are going to embrace composting if they choose to.

If they choose not, that's okay too.

And we a hundred percent support them in those decisions as well- - It won't be because they- - But it won't be 'cause they don't know how to.

We're gonna make sure everyone knows how to, and when it comes to our program and to what we like to call our solid waste training program, we really listen to the solid waste community.

And we wanna know what they wanna know more about.

And this was one of those topics.

- So when you say you wanna see more people composting, sure you're happy enough that I'm have my shovel.

But what you really want to see is more municipal or county landfills, for example, utilizing this.

Because as you pointed out in your research data show, this is a fiscal challenge for lots and lots of communities.

Small communities in Wyoming have a landfill need.

And because of other stipulations regulations, they have to close before the community's ready to do another one.

Siting a landfill is time consuming.

It's difficult, expensive.

And you believe, and there's information already showing.

It eases the strain.

- It does.

It preserves landfill space.

So if the community has a landfill, that landfill is gonna last longer for them.

It's also gonna provide a product to their community that folks will be able to use in their gardens, their yards.

They can even use it at the landfill too.

You know, as landfills move through their life, cells get closed and they have to have caps put on them.

And those caps need to be vegetated.

And the vegetation of caps is really hard to do in Wyoming.

- Interesting.

- And so having those soil amendments on site, not having to bring them from offsite and not having to incur that cost, we're gonna be able to vegetate those caps and help prevent erosion and protect those caps that are protecting our groundwater.

- I know of a landfill operation that decided the best solution was to bail in these incredibly tight compressed cubes and put those into the ground eventually.

And it did save space.

But I wonder, based on what you've said today, if that was necessarily the best thing to do in terms of land use.

- I don't think so.

- Just don't?

- No, I think that we need to start figuring out what we want to use our vertical space on our landfills for, what a lot of communities and states across the country do is they have landfill bands for food scraps.

They have landfill bands for leaf and yard because they believe that material has a better and higher use outside of disposal.

And I think that's the mantra that I tell.

And I think that we're gonna hear that more and more as our resources get limited.

- And there's money involved.

- I was gonna say a landfill sighting is expensive and it takes years to do.

We just cited a new landfill in Weston County.

It's the first one since I've been with DEQ, which is seven years now.

And it took a couple of years to do the siting and all of the permitting and then also the construction of it.

And they have to have liners now to protect groundwater.

These are highly engineered systems and so it is really expensive.

- Who paid for that?

- The Solid waste District did.

So taxpayers.

And then also there were some grants received from the ARPA funds through the state.

- I remember as a news person covering a landfill siting, and they thought they had a great site and went through a lot of this process.

Something happened, I don't quite remember the details where they said, "Oh boy, this won't work after all."

Start completely over somewhere else.

And we thought this was the good place to begin with.

And so residents of it's typically at the county level, pay a little bit of tax to help to manage this kind of issue.

These is the solid waste community that you're talking about?

- Yeah, so it's our counties.

Some of our counties manage it.

Some of our municipalities actually manage it.

The majority of municipal solid waste landfills in the state are actually publicly owned.

We only have one private landfill in the entire state.

It's over in Torrington.

But all of the rest are all publicly run.

And they are seen as essential functions for the community.

And so taking green waste and handling all of the various waste streams is very important to those who run our solid waste facilities across the state.

It's a personal, it's very personal to them, which is fantastic.

They really care about the sites and their communities and they take care of it.

- And you start involving the taxpayers and the dollars and cents and they'll pay attention.

As much as y hope you're enjoying your visit to Wyoming.

You can't be everywhere at once.

And you think that leaving behind not just a demonstration, but a a level of knowledge and of education that can flourish without you is just vital, correct?

- Absolutely.

And I like to think that when I come to a community and I make an impact, I get a program started.

I still stay in touch with them.

I'll stay in touch with these guys.

I'll make sure that everything is set, if they have any questions, because it's really important what we've done here today.

But what's more important is the education they're gonna continue with and the people they're gonna train and the communities they're gonna benefit from.

- So you're spreading the gospel almost.

- It's a great gig.

It's something that I've had the privilege of being able to do.

I'm honored by it.

I'm humbled by it.

- Jody Weikart, Mark King, I appreciate the time you've spent.

Thanks for being with us on Wyoming Chronicle.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thanks for having us.

(cheerful music)