Whether you realize it or not, if you use a green bin in Spokane County, you’ve been composting — and you may be doing it wrong.
In November, the Spokane Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) inked a five-year contract that names Barr-Tech, a company based in Fishtrap that processes organic waste, as Spokane’s sole-service provider for composting. The contract is estimated to cost the county $1.6 million per year.
Barr-Tech has been handling the county’s composting needs for more than a decade, but the new sole-service contract highlights a concern with municipal composting: because composting is less pervasive than recycling, it’s hard for average people to know what products Barr-Tech can compost, and therefore what they should throw in their green bins.
Scott Deatherage, Barr-Tech’s Operations Manager, told RANGE that many errant products make their way into Barr-Tech’s organic waste stream, both because of consumer error and misleading marketing of products the Washington Department of Ecology allows to be labeled “biodegradable” or “eco-friendly” but that Barr-Tech cannot process.
There are a few points of confusion. First, it’s common for consumers to conflate recycling and composting, which are very different things. Whereas recycling repurposes products like glass, paper and some plastics to create other commodities for the marketplace, composting breaks down biodegradable materials, like plants and some containers made from plants to create rich soil.
Deatherage said some consumers throw recyclable glass and plastics into their compost bins because they believe recycling and composting are interchangeable processes.
The other point of confusion deals with marketing terminology and loose regulation of buzzwords like “biodegradable.” Some products are specifically certified to be composted. Many other products, like certain cups, plates and cutlery are marketed as “biodegradable.” It may seem sensible to assume that “compostable” and “biodegradable” are synonyms. In practice, though, they are anything but.
To be processed at Barr-Tech, a product must bear a special compost certification made by one of two (yes, two) certification organizations.
So given all of that, and in honor of this new compost contract, we thought now would be a good time to explain the services available to us in Spokane County, their limitations, and how you can ensure that “eco-friendly” container you tossed doesn’t mess with our community’s mulch.
Before we can make things simpler, we really need to explain why they’re so damn complicated. (If you want to just skip straight to the dos and don’ts, click here, but you’re going to be missing a magical mystery tour filled with lots of science and, unfortunately, even more greenwashing.)
Composting services and their limitations
Barr-Tech has provided composting services to Spokane County since 2011 and to the city of Spokane since 2014. For most of that time, other contractors oversaw the sorting and management of organic waste before it arrived at Barr-Tech’s facility.
Debra Geiger, the county’s solid waste manager, told RANGE that under the new contract, the primary change will be the county’s involvement with Spokane’s waste management: where previously a third party managed certain transfer stations — large, warehouse-like facilities where waste is stored and sorted before it arrives at Barr-Tech or another waste management facility — those operations are now the county’s responsibility. By cutting out the middleman, the county now contracts solely with Barr-Tech and plays a major role in sorting Spokane’s organic waste.
Barr-Tech’s facility is suited to process up to 230,000 tons of organic waste per year — ranging from curbside bin waste to human biosolids and produce waste from grocery stores — from around the Inland Northwest. Eventually, the waste is broken down into a soil-building product that Barr-Tech sells in bulk to landscapers and farmers.
Most consumers are aware that some organic waste — a banana peel, for example — is “backyard compostable,” meaning that it not only breaks down easily in a commercial facility but it can even be composted in your garden.
Deatherage told RANGE, though, that a slew of new products, namely those bioplastic cups and cutlery that have saturated the market, cannot be processed by Barr-Tech unless they’re certified as compostable by one of two organizations: the Compost Manufacturers Alliance (CMA) and the Biodegradable Plastics Institute (BPI). We’ll explain the reason for this in a moment.
With every load of organic waste that arrives at Barr-Tech from a transfer station, non compostable items — some errant recyclables and others un-certified “biodegradable” products — slip through the cracks. Deatherage said that Barr-Tech cannot accept these materials, abiding by the near-sacred rule of “no plastic, no metal, no rocks, and absolutely no glass.”
Because of this, a secondary sorting process takes place: these items are picked out and sent to a landfill or incinerator.
Such materials must be sorted out by hand, either by county employees at transfer stations or at Barr-Tech’s facility, which is the last line of defense against contamination. Deatherage said Barr-Tech has, “at least two full-time employees that [sorting waste] is all they do. During peak season, we’ll have four.”
‘Lookalikes:’ a cinematic universe
For a product to be certified compostable, it has to meet a set of criteria regarding the conditions and amount of time it requires to break down. According to BPI, the term “biodegradable” is not specific about either of those very important factors. So while a “biodegradable” product might break down in a pile of dirt, there’s no telling how long that would take, or what extra steps would be necessary.
The trouble with those bioplastic products we mentioned above (and their certification) is that there isn’t much regulation around how they can be marketed. Washington state has the Plastic product degradability law that requires compostable products to meet a strict set of labeling standards. But this legislation does not prohibit non-compostable products (including bioplastics) from using the labels “biodegradable” or “eco-friendly” with strikingly similar branding to their compostable counterparts.
Coupled with the fact that many consumers are unaware of how BPI or CMA certification (or lack thereof) appears on products, these “biodegradables” — called “lookalikes” — make it difficult for the average consumer to know what is actually compostable and what is not.
When asked how a consumer might be able to tell certified and non-certified products apart, Deatherage said, “unfortunately, it’s not impossible, but it’s very difficult to do at a glance.”
Because of these lookalikes, Deatherage said, Barr-Tech only accepts bioplastics when it’s able to independently verify that those products are certified before taking them to the facility. This means that, to avoid contamination from lookalikes, Barr-Tech’s policy is to refuse any bioplastics from consumer’s curbside bins.
In other words, any bioplastics coming straight from the consumer are thrown into the garbage rather than composted because it is too hard to tell at a glance whether a product is certified compostable.
“There’s just so much greenwashing out there,” Deatherage said. “It’s way too confusing for the consumer.”
What happens when we get it wrong?
Contaminants are rigorously kept out of Barr-Tech’s final product, but often at a cost.
Materials like aluminum and glass will, if the system functions properly, get sorted out and sent back to Spokane where, instead of being recycled, they will be labeled as contaminants and sent to Spokane’s Waste to Energy Plant (WTE) to be incinerated.
This means materials that could have been effectively recycled will be needlessly trucked round-trip nearly 50 miles from Spokane to Barr-Tech and back and then burned, undermining in part the carbon-saving intent behind both recycling and composting, as well as creating unnecessary labor. The same thing happens to bioplastics taken from consumer bins.
Deatherage told RANGE that even those rare certified materials that Barr-Tech accepts can often cause problems. Once they are pulverized into small flakes to make it easier for them to break down, bioplastics settle to the top of the pile because they are a light material. On a windy day, Deatherage said, they can blow away into a field near the facility.
“The wind doesn’t care whether it’s a bioplastic or not,” Deatherage said.
Because it can’t decompose properly, that plastic sits there and leaches into the soil, despite Barr-Tech’s best efforts to rake it up.
Despite the challenges of the current composting infrastructure, Barr-Tech produces tens of thousands of tons of soil-building products per year. They don’t just help fortify farms and gardens but are even used in highway construction and mine reclamation, Deatherage told RANGE. Read below to find out the dos and don’ts of composting so your organic waste can be put to good use.
So, what can you put in your yard waste bin?
To help eliminate confusion, RANGE created a short guide on what materials consumers should and should not put in their curbside bins. This guide is based on Deatherage’s interview with RANGE and the City of Spokane’s own guide to composting, which can be found here.
- Bioplastics (or any plastics): For several reasons (read the accompanying article to learn them!), Barr-Tech is unable to accept plastics of any kind, even bioplastics, directly from the consumer. For any “biodegradable” or “commercially compostable” products you come across, it is worth checking for a CMA or BPI certification.
- Rocks: No, strike two.
- Food scraps: Yes, absolutely. Even meat, poultry, fish, dairy products, breads, eggshells, coffee grounds and more.
- Glass and aluminum (or any metal): No, not unless you want your flower bed to be spiky. Glass and metals like aluminum harm the composting process. Barr-Tech Operations Manager Scott Deatherage said that, to make its soil-building product, the facility pulverizes organic waste, then leaves it to sit in large, covered, aerated piles. If any glass or metal makes its way into the grinder, it splinters into small shards. Deatherage told RANGE that finding these materials in one’s compost is not only dangerous but that it also affects Barr-Tech’s market because buyers and regulatory agencies have a “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to glass and metals. However, glass and aluminum are both infinitely recyclable. You’ll be doing a net good by placing clean and dry glass and aluminum into your recycling bin rather than your compost bin.
- Textiles or other clothing: No. According to the city’s website, textiles are not accepted in curbside bins.
- Animal waste: Nope. Contrary to popular belief, solid waste from animals is not accepted at Barr-Tech because it has not gone through the proper treatment processes.
Paper: Yes and no… according to the City of Spokane’s website, it is acceptable to put food-soiled paper like pizza boxes, coffee filters, tea bags, napkins, and more, as well as cartons for berries and eggs into curbside bins. Deatherage confirmed this, but he noted that this paper must be “fibrous” and not coated – meaning covered with a shiny wax or plastic. So, more confusion. Luckily, though, most coated papers can’t be recycled, either, so if you’re already used to not recycling that waxy latte cup, it should be easy to remember not to try to compost it, either.
Editor’s note: Thanks to a great reader question, we wanted to add that you can buy finished compost from retailers around Spokane County. Find the list here.
