Whitehorse Daily Star

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Photo by Vince Fedoroff

A MAJOR MONEY-SAVER – Garret Gillespie, the head of Boreale Compost Enterprises Ltd., stands with his Compost Liberator last Friday afternoon. The machine will be toured across North America starting next week.

Compost separator brainchild reaches fruition

A Yukon-made piece of machinery has the potential to separate waste out of compost across the country.

By Stephanie Waddell on February 3, 2017

A Yukon-made piece of machinery has the potential to separate waste out of compost across the country.

Garret Gillespie, who heads up Boreale Compost Enterprises Ltd., unveiled the company’s Compost Liberator at an event last Friday afternoon in Whitehorse.

It’s a machine that’s been years in the making, with Gillespie having started working on the technology for it six years ago. Gillespie insists there is nothing like it in the marketplace.

Asked Monday what pushed him to work on it all these years, he replied: “Boneheadedness.”

He noted he always wondered why it was possible to send astronauts to the moon, but so difficult to get the stickers on fruit separated from the fruit peels in the composting process.

Thus, Gillespie began working on coming up with the concept of the separator when he was operating the city’s compost facility years ago.

While he and the city have gone their separate ways, he noted the machine would not have come about without the city’s facilities and its efforts to move forward on the composting front.

“It just doesn’t exist,” Gillespie said of this type of machine, highlighting the high degree of precision the machine has in taking plastics out of compost through an extensive process in the machine.

As he explained, it separates material that would otherwise be land-filled because of the amount of garbage in it, creating cleaner compost.

“It’s a major cost-savings,” Gillespie said, noting it will reduce the amount of plastic that has to be land-filled from compost facilities by about 98 per cent.

Boreale’s partner in the project – Vemeer Canada Inc. – will be touring the machine throughout North America starting next week.

Gillespie said he already knows of one facility in B.C. interested in making the approximately $350,000 purchase (the exact price for a unit will depend on the specifications of each facility).

Once officials at more facilities have the opportunity to see it, he expects there will be excitement in the industry.

Comments (2)

Up 2 Down 0

CMC on Feb 7, 2017 at 8:18 am

So cool! Thank you for inventing this machine. Is there a way to follow the progress of this machine? I can't find a website, twitter etc.

Up 22 Down 2

ProScience Greenie on Feb 3, 2017 at 3:43 pm

Awesome! Great work.

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