We've developed a bit more of a waste stream management, as well as our solar side of things. So in our recycling, our milk bottles are returned to our milk vendors. And then the latest project that we've looked at is, a decomposer or a dehydrator, that is being used on our site. We've had it in place now for about three months, the benefit and why we wanted to put it on this site, was that we are using solar here. And we can use that power in periods that we're not maximising it in-house for our baking facilities, it is actually subsidising the energy use of the dehydrator. This is a dehydrator, we link it to our power on our site. We're using solar, generally we aim to try to start it up during a daytime period, so that solar is, any solar that's being exported is utilised through this unit.
We use approximately 50 kilograms of waste material will go into this. We dispose or we send a lot of our product through to charity groups and places like that. But once we get to end of use, we don't want to put that into landfill. So we've embraced this system where it basically, we place the 50 kilograms in, it cycles, turns it and heats it up to 160 degrees for an eight hour period, and then after that period, the compost material comes out as a granular, not a powder, but a granular type material. So we place the material into one of our storage bins.
This material is of yesterday, and it's a quite a granular type product. As you can see different products, the quite golden colour, probably a lot of pastry was placed in there at the time. But there is, an aroma similar of coffee material throughout this. So this was pies, meat, pastries, cakes, and things like that. And we end up with a product that is quite odourless, but with a pleasant smell, and we use it on the gardens, we do a bit of fertilising on the grass areas. But we're looking at using that on our farm back at home.
How can solar power help optimise waste stream management for a business?
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