INDIANAPOLIS —
Maybe you've thought about composting, but really don't have the time or space to do it. Now, there is a company that will do the hard work for you.
“This is called a trommel. It's just a fancy name for a sifter. And so the raw compost comes in on this side,” said Bob Mattax, owner of ScrapCycle.
Mattax is making a difference with every bucket of scraps he sifts by turning organic trash — like decayed fruit and vegetables, coffee grounds, egg shells, card board and shredded newspapers — into compost.
"The process is, put your stuff in a bucket, and then, we put it into a pile," Mattax said. "The pile gets aerated, physically aerated, moving it to expose it to oxygen, and then, the occasional rain takes care of moisture."
His composting program, ScrapCycle, was created during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“So, two years ago, it was, you know, the, the eve of the pandemic, and my wife and I were avid gardeners, and we were like, 'How can we get some more compost for our own garden?" Mattax said. "We'd been composting for a couple of years. And we're like, well, maybe we can just ask our friends and family to collect it."
Now, ScrapCycle is collecting scraps from almost 300 homes. And it all starts with a bucket.
"It's delivered to your home and comes with instructions and a little welcome letter, telling you what you should and shouldn't put in it," Mattax said. "And then, every two weeks, we come by, and we pick it up, we empty it into our own pickup truck, and then, we drop it off here at our processing facility."
Then, chemistry starts taking over.
“It demands carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water. And from there, everything is kind of figured out that it turns back into dirt," Mattax said. “So right here, we're just monitoring the actual activity of our pile. If your pile doesn't get hot enough, it doesn't actually kill the seeds and weeds and things that are inside of it. You may or may not be able to see right now, but our pile is registering hot, which is great thing. Every two weeks, we rotate everything in one bin to the left or to the right to just keep things oxygenated, which is another key component of the process.”
From there, the dirt goes into that electric powered trommel.
"It's not pretty, but it gets the job done,” Mattax said. “The first chamber ends up breaking it up into smaller pieces, and once the smaller pieces get to the grate stuff that's the right size, (it) falls through down into our collection tubs, and then, everything that's not ready falls out the far end and gets thrown back into the pile, and it gets cooked a little bit longer. Nobody asked to do it, but it's something that we really should be doing for our kids so that we preserve the beautiful environment that we do have."
Once the compost is ready in the spring, ScrapCycle shares the black dirt with members to use in their gardens, shrubs and flower beds.
ScrapCycle is currently in Muncie and Yorktown and will be in Albany, Anderson and Daleville within the next year.