Gallins Family Farm Update
June 16, 2011
We recently received an update on the progress of the farm from Peter Gallins, Director of Agricultural Operations:
"Since March of 2011, Gallins Family Farm has collected 122 cubic yards of organic waste material that would have otherwise gone to the Hanes Mill Landfill in Winston-Salem. At the farm, we transform this waste into an organic soil amendment that will be used to grow crops this fall. 122 cubic yards is equivalent to 3,294 cubic feet, 24,640 gallons, or about 31 dumpsters. Operations are growing fast with half of the waste we have collected so far being from the month of May.
Gallins Family Farm is permitted through the NC Division of Waste Management as a Type 3 composting facility. This approves us to accept manures, vegetative agricultural waste, other agricultural waste, yard & garden waste, silvicultural waste, untreated & unpainted wood waste, post-consumer source separated food wastes, and other separated specialty wastes.
From start to finish, we are turning organic waste into finished compost in about 90 days. It is important to remove organic waste from the landfill because:
1. Reduction in greenhouse gases: when organic waste is deposited in the landfill, it generates large amounts of methane gas during decomposition. Methane (CH4) captures 56 times the amount of heat as Carbon Dioxide (CO2).
2. Reduction in cost of waste removal and disposal. Take Gallins Foods, for example: as much as 90% of waste generated by Gallins Foods locations is organic and by collecting that organic waste for composting, we have reduced their waste removal costs dramatically. These savings will continue to increase, as the Hanes Mill Landfill has a useful life of less than twenty years, and as the landfill fills up, the costs for disposal will increase."
For more information about Gallins Family Farm, visit their page on this site.