Sludge is key, says compost king

Iqaluit’s compost king is preparing to raise his troops.

Jim Little has the backing of about 100 Iqaluit residents signed up for his fledgling Bill Mackenzie Humanitarian Society, but the most important members of his coalition are so small you can’t see them.

Tiny organisms called microbes teem away in his compost pile, breaking down old apple cores, wilted lettuce and other organic waste into nutrient-rich soil.

“As of yesterday, the temperature inside the compost was 40 degrees,” Little said in an interview in October. “It’s still cooking away. We have some pretty voracious microbes up here.”

Last year, Little organized a pilot project in which about 100 families scraped their coffee grounds and other food waste into specially-marked bags, which were collected and added to the compost pile, under the rubric of the Iqaluit Recycling Society.

More recently, he’s founded the Bill Mackenzie Humanitarian Society —named after the eccentric Scot and longtime Iqaluit resident who, Little says, had a fondness for salvaging what he could from the dump.

Conventional models of recycling just don’t fit the Arctic, Little argues. That’s because recycling plastics, paper and most metals isn’t a profitable venture when shipping costs are factored in.

The city reached this conclusion in May, when it decided the four sea cans of recyclable material it had gathered would be compacted in the landfill, rather than shipped south.

“The more successful the recycling program is, the more it will cost the city,” Little said. “Unless you get a barge to ship it out, it’s a no-win situation.”

Meanwhile, Iqaluit’s existing landfill has between five to seven years until it becomes full, said public works director Mark Hall.

But recyclable metals and plastics only fill out a tiny slice of what winds up in the dump. In contrast, audits conducted over the years show about one-quarter of what winds up in the landfill is food waste, suitable for composting.

Those waste audits ignore two important ingredients, Little says. The first is wood dumped at the landfill, which Little believes takes up a large, unaccounted slice. The second is sludge, soon to be generated by Iqaluit’s sewage treatment plant.

“We have a plan,” Little says, fanning out a pile of papers across his kitchen table. “And the sewage sludge is the key.”

It’s stinky, nasty stuff, and the city expects to generate 1,630 kilograms of it a day by the end of next summer. That amount will increase to over 3,000 kilograms when the plant is fully operational. “It’s foul. Nobody wants to go near it, but it composts well. It almost catches on fire.”

Little also says sludge is essential for a large-scale composting operation, when combined with a bulking agent, like chipped wood or shredded cardboard, which could also be redirected from the dump. Once churned and aerated for several days, it would have almost no smell.

The next move, says Little, is to hire a firm to answer a few basic questions. He wants to know the cost of packing the landfill at the current rate, and having to eventually expand the existing dump site.

He’d also like to know what profits could come from a greener Iqaluit. A small demonstration of the potential value of compost appeared on the sandy hillside facing the Frobisher Inn’s entrance this summer, where a patch of grass grew in the shape of a large letter “C,” cultivated by Little and his compost gang.

He imagines the entire town in bloom, rather than coated in sand, in the years to come. That beautification could benefit the city and help draw visitors, he says.

His compost program is funded by the federal government’s eco-action program. The Canada Research Council has expressed interest in funding a large-scale composting operation, one that would involve carting sludge from the treatment plant to an enclosed canopy with the help of a special vehicle designed to kick-start the composting process.

But all that’s down the road. In the meantime, Little is still searching for home compost converts. He’s disappointed neither the mayor nor the minister of the environment enrolled, but he’s looking for a long-time commitment from residents who enroll, not just a composting fling.

“This is a permanent change to your devotion to the big bag.”