New Halifax organics facility turns food waste into high-grade compost

The food scraps Halifax residents throw in their green bins have a new destination — and value.

The new organics waste facility in Goodwood, which opened in September, handles all the waste from across the capital region.

Sean Hagan, general manager for AIM Environmental Management, which runs the facility, said new technology allows them to process waste quicker than ever before.

"This is like a Ferrari compared to the jalopies, right? Not that there was anything wrong with the original facilities — they did their intended purpose — but this is the latest and greatest," Hagan said.

He said the facility was built to higher standards and uses more modern technology than the two former facilities in nearby Ragged Lake and the Burnside area of Dartmouth.

The waste is brought in, shredded and then packed into large containers, or vessels. Hagan said they can then control the moisture, air and pH levels in the vessels to speed up the composting process. The material is then moved into another area to form numerous piles, with the entire cycle taking about three months, when it used to take a year or more.

The former facilities turned out poor-quality compost that was too wet and acidic to meet provincial Environment Department guidelines.

But now Hagan said the end result is class A compost that is sold to a local agricultural company. The compost revenue is split 50-50 between the municipality and Harbour City Renewables, according to a city spokesperson. Harbour City is AIM's parent organization that won the contract to design, build and operate the facility.

"So old food is now new food for plants. And this is a process for us to really improve the environment, and economically this makes a lot of sense," said Kirk Symonds, manager of education and promotion for Halifax's solid waste department.

The city is planning to offer that high-quality compost up to the public in giveaways next year, Symonds said.

"We want to be able to get this literally into the hands of people so they can see the efforts that they've been putting in are really worthwhile," he said.

The building also has multiple odour-controlling measures that Hagan said have literally been a "breath of fresh air."

When they arrive, garbage trucks pull into an airlock system where the outside door closes before the interior one can open, keeping strong smells inside.

Air from the smelliest operating areas of the facility is sent through acid scrubbers and filtered to remove odours before it is vented out a tall roof stack. Hagan said all the composting is now done inside the building, while earlier sites did some processing and loading of vehicles outside.

Symonds said he's spoken with neighbours who had concerns about odours from the old Ragged Lake site, but as soon as he mentioned the airlock system, "that was the beginning and the end of the conversation."

"This convinced them," Symonds said. "This is really the big selling point."

The air scrubbing process creates a second product the facility can sell to farmers: ammonium sulfate, which can be used as a liquid fertilizer.

The facility now handles about 53,000 tonnes of waste a year with a capacity of 60,000 that could be extended to 75,000 tonnes.

In 2020, Harbour City Renewables won the $288-million contract to design, build and operate the facility for 25 years with options to extend to 35 years. The total project cost over 25 years is estimated around $457 million.

Harbour City includes Maple Reinders Constructors and AIM Environmental, both subsidiaries of the Maple Reinders Group, which financed the facility through a public-private partnership.

The Halifax site is modelled on facilities Maple Reinders has in Hamilton, Guelph, Ont., and Calgary, which are also municipally owned but privately operated.

Halifax pays a monthly fee as part of the deal that covers construction, operating and composting costs. A municipal spokesperson said the total capital and operating cost for the facility over the next year is projected to be roughly $16.3 million.

A Halifax staff report said costs for the 2024-25 year as the new facility came online would be roughly $2 million, or 17.5 per cent higher than the year before.

The municipality is now looking to decommission the two idle former facilities, which had a combined capacity of about 50,000 tonnes of waste.