Biosolids facility tour
At Rosebud, nothing goes to waste. And we appreciate it when we see another facility that lets nothing go to waste. Recently, we had the pleasure of touring a biosolids facility and boy, were we impressed with what they did with waste!
Merrell Bro’s is one such facility that is also recycling their waste into a valuable resource! (We love to see it!) They are a biosolids facility turning human waste into commercial grade fertilizer for use on farms, in gardens, and in landscaping; and they are one of the first facilities like this in the country!
The facility itself is a private-public-government partnership, located in Pasco County, Florida and collecting waste from Pasco, Hillsborough, Manatee, and Hernando counties (and sometimes even further depending on capacity) through the wastewater treatment plants. After waste is brought to the facility, it goes through a multi-step process. First, the waste air dries and is areated in a giant greenhouse. Next, waste is moved indoors and processed through an extruder machine to form pellet shapes before being dried out further in an oven type machine, resulting in small slow-release fertilizer pellets for commercial use.
It is a fully closed loop system that makes excellent use of our waste and returns the waste back to the earth in a productive way. These fertilizer pellets are very rich in nutrients (consisting of all the nutrients from our diet). We are grateful to Merrell Bro's for the very interesting and very insightful tour. We are proud to have a facility like this so close by and look forward to seeing more facilities like this in the future!
