'Making Good Earth Better' Goal of Waste-to-Resource Firm

By P.J. Heller

   “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Nowhere is that more true than in northern Ohio, where a long-established waste-to-resource company is turning everything from demolition and construction waste and sewage sludge into products that homeowners and businesses can use to spruce up their properties.
   “I can’t believe what we do,” enthuses Diane Kurtzman, a spokesperson for Kurtz Bros. Inc., of Independence, Ohio. “Everything we touch has a recycled component.
   “Our tagline is ‘we make the good earth better’ and that’s what we try to do every day,” says Kurtzman, who is no relation to the company owners.
   Kurtz Bros., has been operating in the region for more than 60 years, starting as a commercial topsoil company serving area farmers. It has since grown into multiple divisions, including seven retail stores.
   Among the company’s efforts: pioneering work in the U.S. in the biogas industry, reusing millions of tons of foundry sand from the Ford Motor Co.’s casting plant and producing a variety of mulches and compost. The company employs more than 150 people.
   Several of its product offerings and business ventures are closely intertwined.
   Its EarthPro brick chips, produced from construction and demolition debris sorted at its material reclamation facility in Brooklyn Heights, are sold as mulch. The facility processes about 1,200 tons a day of debris such as wood, bricks and metals. Some 85 to 90 percent of that debris is recycled and kept out of the demolition landfill, Kurtzman reports. Kurtz Bros., has operated that landfill for the city for more than 20 years.
   While the brick chips are common in some parts of the U.S., Kurtzman says they are relatively new in Ohio.
   The brick chips have characteristics similar to wood mulch, helping to retain moisture and reduce weed growth, she says. The advantages of the brick chips, she explains, are that users don’t have to apply them year after year, the chips don’t lose their color, they are nonflammable and they won’t degrade.
   The company encourages users to combine the brick chips, which are sold in 50-pound bags or in bulk, with its TechnaGro compost.
   “We recommend they put down TechnaGro with the brick chips,” Kurtzman says. “The black [compost] against the red [chips] is beautiful to see. The plants get nutrition from the compost, and then you have the decorative red mulch around it. And both are 100 percent recycled.”
   The TechnaGro compost is a biosolid produced from sewage sludge from the Akron municipal wastewater treatment plant. The plant serves Akron and several surrounding communities. The sludge is pumped to a plant across the Cuyahoga River run by KB Composting Services, where it is either composted or put through an anaerobic digester to create electricity.
   While some have questioned the safety and viability of using sewage sludge for compost, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency long ago endorsed the concept.
   “Composting is a cost-effective and environmentally acceptable alternative to such ultimate disposal methods as incineration, ocean dumping and landfilling,” it says.
   The Maine Department of Environmental Protection also gives the sludge-to-compost concept a thumbs up.
   “The general climate for sludge composting is healthy,” it says. “More cities are turning to composting because of the public’s perception of recycling. As it gets increasingly difficult to site combustion facilities, and where land application is not feasible, composting is becoming the preferred method for handling sewage sludge.”
   Annette Berger, vice president of operations for KB Composting Services (a division of Kurtz Bros.) and who has been involved in the industry for 25 years, agrees that sludge-to-compost is completely safe.
   “The U.S. EPA has such stringent requirements and they did such thorough testing that if you follow the guidelines, which are very intense, it is very safe,” she says. “We tell people they can use it on their vegetable gardens.”
   Berger says that she tells people who may be concerned about using the product to take a look at other compost products, such as those created from horse manure, that are unregulated.
   “Which would you rather have,” she asks.
   Under its contract with the city of Akron, KB Compost Services has municipal wastewater solids pumped to its plant where it is dewatered and compressed, with the resulting material mixed with yard waste or sawdust and a binding agent. The mixture then goes through a 30-day composting process in an indoor facility.
   The wastewater treatment plant handles 90 million gallons of liquid sludge a week. Of that, 1.5 million gallons is pumped to KB Composting Services, where it is either composted or converted into energy using anaerobic digestion.
   “The composting process is based upon an agitated in-vessel system utilizing four 720-foot-long rectangular reactor vessels,” according to the city’s water pollution control division. “The sludge is dewatered using Belt filter presses then mixed with bulking agents such as yard waste, hardwood bark and sawdust. Air is blown into the mixture to provide oxygen for the biological decomposition process. Odors are contained and controlled with 12 two-stage packed tower scrubbers.”
   In 2007, a $7 million sludge-to-energy plant was built at the same location as the composting facility. That facility, also run by KB Compost Services for the city, uses anaerobic digestion to create a methane-rich biogas. That gas, in turn, powers a 335kw generator to produce electricity to help run the plant as well as the composting facility.
   The power generated by the system — currently about 93 percent of its capacity — is saving the city an estimated $14,000 a month on its utility bill, Berger says.
   “If a city has sludge to manage and if they can find something viable for them — electricity, natural gas — that they can use to supplement their wastewater operations, it’s a win for all municipalities and the constituents of that community,” she says.
   Akron was the first city in the U.S. to build a sludge-to-electricity plant. A second $10 million plant is planned for Columbus with an $8 million plant being planned for Zanesville. Some 40 proposals for similar facilities are being considered nationwide, Berger says.
   Anaerobic digestion is used by other municipalities, which typically burn off the methane gas, but the Akron plant was the first in the nation to harness the process to create electricity, Berger says. What also makes the Akron system unique, she says, is the fact that it is putting 30 percent dry solids into the system, compared to the 3 percent to 5 percent dry solids used by other municipalities. That fact should reduce construction costs for the plants, she says.
   Kutrz Bros., partnered with Schmack Biogas AG, a German company, to share technology and develop the market in North America. Schmack BioEnergy was created to develop the U.S. market.
   While anaerobic digestion is relatively new in the U.S., there are an estimated 4,000 anaerobic digesters in operation in Europe and Asia from a variety of vendors. Schmack Biogas has built about 275 of the plants in Europe.
   “Not only is the renewable energy aspect of the business exciting, processing organic waste materials in a controlled system through digestion has many environmental benefits,” notes Tom Kurtz, an officer at Kurtz Bros., and Schmack BioEnergy. “Most organic wastes such as wastewater solids, food waste, animal waste, fats, oils, grease, etc., are either landfilled, land applied, composted or incinerated. In these processes there are always concerns with air and water pollution. Biogas plants manage these concerns.”
   The anaerobic digester in Akron treats one-third — roughly 5,000 tons — of the 15,000 dry tons of solids generated annually. The balance is composted to become TechnaGro.
   With the cost to produce that compost rising, including costs for amendments such as sawdust and yard wastes, Berger says plans call for ending that sludge-to-compost operation.
   “We’re working on preliminary designs for 100 percent to go to ADS (anaerobic digestion system),” she says. “The intention is to eventually get out of the composting operation [at the plant].”
   The company will continue to offer its other compost products.
   “The only reason we’re moving away from composting . . . is that we can’t control our costs,” she explains. “The premise of composting was based upon the fact that you could take some wastes, including sawdust and yard waste and add it to our type of solids and produce a compost that has value to it.
   “The premise now has changed,” she adds, noting that wastes which once had no value today do have value and are being incorporated into other products.
   Unlike the sludge-to-compost operation where amendments need to be added, nothing is added in the anaerobic digestion process.
   “On the anaerobic digestion side, I’m actually not adding anything to it and I’m reducing the solids because I’m getting the gas out of it, so at the end of the day I’ve got something less than what I started with,” Berger says. “That’s really the objective.”
   Berger says that efforts such as biogas are “giving back to the environment.”
   “I think a lot of people don’t realize what it really takes to manage the waste,” she says. “We all have a tendency to assume that once we either put it out at curbside or flush it down the toilet, that it should be taken care of.”