Donarbon operates two composting systems at its Waterbeach Waste Management Park;
Donarbon takes most of the mixed food and garden waste collected by the District Council kerbside collections in Cambridgeshire (green waste form Huntingdonshire District Council will be composted at our Waterbeach site form August 2010), plus we offer Food Waste Collections to local schools, pubs, businesses and restaurants and this material goes through the in-vessel composting system. We also take all of the garden waste collected at the 9 Household Recycling Centres across Cambridgeshire, plus we offer Drop Off Facilities for tree surgeons, landscape gardeners and the like and this material is composted using our open windrow system.
The soil improver produced through our windrow composting unit at our Waterbeach site meets the national accreditation standard PAS 100 and the material produced through our IVC plant is going through the accreditation process. The majority of all our soil improver is used by local farmers, but we do make some available for the public via Free Compost Collection areas on site.
Composting is a completely natural process; all dead organisms will rot down and it has been used for thousands of years to produce a soil improving material. By doing it in a controlled way, we just speed up the natural processes. Composting is an aerobic process, whereby the bacteria and fungi that carry out the composting process on the organic material need oxygen to survive, as opposed to Anaerobic Digestion where bacteria break down organic material in an environment with no free oxygen.