In-Vessel Composting with Viridor: Never letting ‘waste’ go to waste

Skyview Systems was thrilled to work with the management team at Viridor to deliver an environmentally efficient, legally sound and cost-effective system at the Deep Moor In-Vessel Composting (IVC) facility in Devon.

About Viridor Deep Moor 

Working in partnership with 150+ local authority and corporate clients with 32,000 customers across the UK, Viridor has the UK’s largest network of 300+ advanced recycling, energy recovery and landfill diversion facilities.

Servicing Local Authorities and commercial businesses alike, Viridor prides itself in transforming ‘waste’ into the materials and energy that society will need tomorrow.

Viridor operates a number of high-tech In-Vessel Composting (IVC) facilities in partnership with local authorities in the UK to process co-mingled food and garden waste.

The Viridor Deep Moor IVC facility harnesses the natural composting process in enclosed tunnels to accelerate the cycle to recycle mixed organic garden and food waste into a compost product. The product is screened and graded and can then be used in horticulture and agriculture as a soil improver.

The Challenge

The requirement to minimise the environmental impact on surrounding local communities is clearly stated in the site permit and is a driving factor for waste management teams. 

Waste site operators must also comply with a host of UK and European regulation including the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC and the Landfill Directive (The European Directive 1999/31/EC on the Landfill of Waste), which clearly states that site operators must “… establish common monitoring procedures during the operation and after-care phases of a landfill in order to identify any possible adverse environmental effect of the landfill and take the appropriate corrective measures.”

Accurate monitoring of water levels and rainfall is of particular importance for waste companies managing IVC facilities. Further complications arise if a site is constructed on marshland, as is the case with the Deep Moor, when ground water is forced up. This results in extremely high water levels, which need to be removed daily by tankers in order to avoid any build-up of harmful leachates.  

Our Solution

Our wealth of experience in providing weather monitoring solutions to 350+ UK waste sites allowed us to provide practical advice to help Viridor to comply with legislation at their Deep Moor site, and to ensure that any disruption to the local community would be minimal.

After a detailed site visit to establish Viridor’s requirements, a Vantage Pro2 weather station was installed, along with Weatherlink software and a data logger to accurately measure the specified parameters. This enables site staff to efficiently manage the effects of the rain water combined with the marshland water by monitoring the rainfall and how much surface water is tanked off site.

In addition to Skyview’s consultation and installation services, our service and maintenance agreement and rescue service allows the Viridor team to reduce any down time and have complete confidence in the accuracy of their systems.

 Skylink-pro.com

As subscribers to Skyview’s online weather monitoring portal, Skylink-pro.com, the team at Viridor can pin-point the exact data that they require, including windrose reports, rain and evapotranspiration, historical data and site-specific forecasting to assist the operations team in managing the site.

Data can be viewed from any internet-enabled PC, tablet or smart phone to make crucial and well-informed site decisions.