What do I Need to Start a Composting System for my County

I am interested in this because we have COVID relief money coming to our county and we'd like to establish a community compost facility. What do we need? tractor, 1-ton truck, forklift, signage, fencing..... ? What about a top-loading mortar mixer for making small, well-mixed batches of compost?

Hi, David

That is an interesting topic for which I found several threads that might be helpful:

https://permies.com/t/55500/ungarbage/Large-scale-organic-waste-recycling

https://permies.com/t/84991/start-town-wide-composting-system

https://permies.com/t/95654/run-composting-business-familiar-commercial

https://permies.com/t/63798/Farm-scale-light-commercial-scale

I hope someone will be able to chime in with what kind of equipment will be needed.

If not you might want to visit some operations in your local area to see how they are run.

If I were starting a community composting system, I would want to start small doing something with just a few bins, like one for composting, one for trash, and maybe a bin for glass, plastic, and other recyclable items. Then I could set aside money for other equipment as needed.

Your needs are also probably going to vary greatly based on the characteristics of your community.  If you have people with large yards and cars, you may get people hauling in a lot of brush and leaves, whereas a more urban area full of apartment dwellers may just get a lot of food waste and not much "browns."

A chipper/grinder would be good to have, as well as some sort of blower and pipe system throughout the piles to aerate them instead of having to turn them.

Here's an article about my city buying the local compost facility and doing some upgrades: garden city compost