Page 6 - July- August 2018
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SEVIER COUNTY By Shannon Carey
Composting Facility Gets Upgrade
Tom Leonard, general manager like the Great Smoky Mountains from a landfill as possible.
of Sevier Solid Waste, is tinkering National Park and Dollywood, Sevier “Of course, we live in the foothills, and
towards a goal: to make SSW, the waste Solid Waste is home to the largest co-
management corporation serving the composting facility in the United States, we want to preserve the beauty of our
tourism capitol of Tennessee, into a zero- a system analyzed and imitated around community,” said Howard. “We would
waste facility. the world. have to start transferring waste out of the
county, which is more expensive. It does
That’s not an easy task considering And thanks to Leonard’s tinkering, cost to bury your garbage.”
Sevier County and the three that system is about to get even better.
municipalities of Sevierville, Gatlinburg But, with the composting facility,
and Pigeon Forge generate an average No Space for a Landfill organics like food waste and paper
400 tons of trash per day. The county has products are turned into soil, diverting
around 100,000 residents, but more than The Sevier Solid Waste composting 60 percent of that massive 400 tons from
14 million people visit annually. While facility was completed in 1991, after the landfill.
a residential area can tackle the problem Sevier County and the three cities
of trash through single-home recycling struggled with what to do about the From Trash to Treasure
efforts and subscription services, those increasing problem of waste. A landfill
tactics aren’t appropriate for Sevier was proposed, but the idea was quickly The facility works like a backyard
County. abandoned. composter, just on a larger scale. All the
waste that comes into SSW is loaded,
“For every resident, we have three “People did not want the landfill in unsorted, into huge digesters, and
visitors here any given day,” said Laura their backyard,” said Laura Howard, biosolids are added. The waste stays
Howard, recycling coordinator at recycling coordinator at Sevier Solid in the digesters for three days before
Sevier Solid Waste. “There is a huge Waste. “Also, in Sevier County land is it is unloaded and the large inorganic
amount of waste from tourism, and very hard to come by, so there are not a materials like plastics and metals are
most people when they’re on vacation lot of opportunities to add landfill if we screened out.
are not thinking about recycling and have to.”
composting. It’s easier for us to take care Next up is a 28-day process of daily
of it on the back end.” The county mayor and the cities turning as the material continues to rot
teamed up to do a waste study and and turn into soil. Finally, the compost
So, behind the scenes of attractions discovered that the best tactic was to is screened for lingering, tiny pieces of
tackle the organic portion of the area’s inorganic material. The end result is
waste, keeping as much material away that infamous “black gold,” nutrient-
The inorganic materials travel from the hopper (right) to manual sorting (middle), then to additional pieces of
6 TPW July/August 2018