The RIDAN Composting Unit

For sites that produce alot of food waste such as commercial kitchens, cafes and schools there is a real challenge in composting such large quantities.  With regulatory barriers, rising costs of waste collection and disposal many such organisations find this is a real challenge.  Thankfully though there are several products on the market which provide solutions to deal with large quantities of kitchen waste.

One of these is the RIDAN composter, which is manufactured here in the UK on a farm in Devon.  They are a great solution because they compost in-vessel (within an enclosed container) which means the whole mixture gets really hot and humid and thus it breaks the material down very rapidly.

Unlike some of their competitors though, they have a cost and environmental advantage in that they do not require electricty to operate.  The compost gets hot on its own through microbial action and you turn it with a rotary handle to keep it well mixed and help it pass through.

What I like about these units is that they are so simple, they havent tried to overcomplicate the process and have developed a low tech solution which means there is less complex moving parts that could go wrong.  The fact that they are not electrical also means they can be kept outside which is important for sites which may be contrained in terms of space.

Obviously when you are composting that much food waste, you have to add a bit of sawdust or other carbonous material occasionally to help get the Carbon:Nitrogen ratio right.  This also absorbs a bit of moisture which helps to stop it getting too sludgy. 

All in all, its an excellent product which can help businesses to reduce their waste as well as create a valuable soil improver to use on site.  I think as landfill tax and diesel prices just keep going up and up, in the longer term we're going to see more and more of this kind of unit getting installed in the area.

So far, we have installed two in Shropshire (to my knowledge) one is at Bishops Castle Community College and the other is at the cafe/environmental education centre at Fordhall Community Farm in Market Drayton.  Feedback from both sites has been positive.