List of Services:

   Permitting / Environmental Compliance  –

Composting is an environmentally beneficial activity and good business. Several regulatory permits and issues must be dealt with in order to operate legally.  The new Washington Solid Waste Handling Standards (WAC 173-350) that went into effect February 10, 2003, apply directly to composting facilities. Under these regulations, operating and permitting requirements vary depending upon the feedstock type and quantity of material you will be processing.  

Terre-Source has prepared several permit applications under these new regulations.  We have experience with applying the regulatory requirements, streamlining the permitting process, and working with the various governmental agencies required to get your facility permitted as quickly and efficiently as possible.  We will work with you to establish positive relations between you and your regulators and help you get off to a great start creating a superior beneficial product.    

The microbial composting process can be optimized by taking into consideration the needs of the microbes, encouraging their growth, and utilizing their metabolic by-products, heat and plant soluble nutrients, to create a high quality, marketable product. 

Terre-Source can help you develop a facility design that optimizes your site and feedstocks to while minimizing your material handling costs.  A good-fit design can help your operator efficiently monitor the microbial activity, meet regulatory requirements, and produce a superior product.

Composting facilities can vary dramatically in simplicity and scale depending upon the goals of the composter.  Terre-Source can provide the Quality Control and/or Quality Assurance that your design is constructed according to your specifications.  Over 10 years of construction oversight and successful construction negotiations will help ensure that your composting facility is constructed properly.

Terre-Source helps composters produce high quality compost products by providing expertise in the composting process.   Terre-Source provides:

 þ Process recommendations to help control the composting parameters to help ensure good pathogen reduction, odor control, weed seed kill, and regulatory compliance that will create a high quality product focused on your market;  

þ Careful scrutiny of monitoring data such as temperature, oxygen content, and laboratory test results as well as site inspections to help maintain optimum composting efficiency;

þ Third Party Review of compost facilities to help streamline record keeping, annual reporting, and product handling;

þ Terre-Source can also prepare the required annual reporting and help pull together the information needed from the process monitoring and material volume data collected during the year.

Composting uses biological processes to heat and degrade organic feedstocks to produce a biologically stable, humus-rich, beneficial soil amendment.  Optimizing the compost microbial processes is similar to raising crops and larger animals.  A farmer must provide for their needs such as food, water, and environment for them to thrive and reproduce.  The compost facility operator is essentially a 'microbe farmer'.

Because any biologic system is necessarily complex the operator must pay constant attention to the “behavior” of the system. Ultimately it is the operator who most influences the success of the process.  The skill and expertise of the operator is, therefore, critical to the success and ultimate production of high quality compost.

Terre-Source, in association with Price-Moon Enterprises, can provide operator training and on-going consultation on all aspects of the composting process and compost facility set up.