Organic Waste Recycling

Acceptable Materials

Waste Transportation

Feedstock Acceptance Protocol

Royal Oak Farm, LLC is the premier organic waste recycling company serving Virginia businesses, industries and municipalities in Virginia.  Royal Oak has over six years experience serving the organic waste recycling needs of Virginia industries.  At our fully-permitted organic waste recycling facility in Evington, Virginia, we manufacture high-quality composts and soil products from a wide variety of clean, non-toxic, non-hazardous organic waste materials and residuals.

We provide cost-effective recycling services for almost any organic waste material, as described below.

We use a comprehensive Feedstock Acceptance Protocol (see below) designed to ensure that the materials we take in are beneficial to our final product quality and not harmful either to the environment or to our workers’ health. 

Acceptable Materials

Royal Oak Farm is the largest multi-feedstock solid waste composting facility in Virginia and is authorized by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) under Permit No. SW-601 to accept a wide variety of materials:

Category I - Pre-consumer, plant or plant-derived materials such as:

1. Agriculture crop residues including but not limited to harvesting residuals, straw, and cornstalks;
2. Livestock feed including but not limited to hay, grain, silage, cottonseed meal, soybean meal;
3. Nonfood agricultural processing waste including but not limited to cotton gin trash, wool carding residue, field corn cobs;
4. Source-separated pre-consumer food wastes including but not limited to wholesale and retail market residuals (e.g., overripe, damaged, or otherwise rejected fruit or vegetables) and institutional kitchen culls;
5. Food processing wastes including culls, peelings, hulls, stems, pits, seed, pulp, shucks, nut shells, apple pomace, corn cobs, cranberry filter cake, olive husks, potato tops, cocoa shells, fruit and vegetable processing waste, rejected products, and bakery wastes; and
6. Source-separated clean waste paper.

Category II - Animal-derived waste material such as:

1. Dairy and fish processing wastes including but not limited to eggs, spoiled milk, cheese, curd, and yogurt, fish gurry and racks, clam bellies, fish shells, fish processing sludge, fish breading crumbs, mussel, crab, lobster, and shrimp wastes; and
2. Rendered animals (beef, pork, deer, poultry, etc.)

Category III - Animal and post-consumer food wastes with pathogen potential such as:

1. Source-separated wastes including but not limited to restaurant waste, institutional kitchen wastes, food preparation wastes, prepared but unserved foods, plate scrapings; and
2. Animal manures including but not limited to spoiled stable straw bedding, livestock feedlot, holding pen and cage scrapings, dairy manure semi-solids, poultry litter and manure.

Category IV - Other wastes such as:

1. Non-rendered animal meat waste including but not limited to animal carcasses, slaughterhouse waste, and paunch manure.
2. Paper mill residuals, wood ash, water treatment plant sludges, saw and sander dust, food processing DAF sludges.

Royal Oak Farm can take in other Category IV wastes depending on pilot tests of materials handling and compostability issues and subject to receipt of a minor permit modification from Virginia DEQ.  These types of wastes might include industrial non-food manufacturing residuals (like scrap cutoffs from biodegradable flooring manufacturing or residuals from cosmetics manufacturing), and sidestreams from other processing steps (like glycerin from biodiesel manufacturing). 

Not acceptable at Royal Oak Farm are biosolids and mixed Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)

Our compost manufacturing process meets and exceeds all Virginia DEQ regulations for:

• Pathogen destruction,
• Time-temperature requirements, and
• Compost stability and quality limits.

We use the turned windrow method of composting, which ensures that the final product in no way resembles the look, feel, or smell of the original waste material.  Our process is based on 30 days of active composting and 30—60 days of product curing/maturation.  The final product is screened and either sold wholesale in bulk quantities direct to landscapers and construction projects or blended with other materials, like sands and soils, to make specialty compost-based soil products.

Waste Transportation

Royal Oak can provide transportation for any industrial waste materials with our fleet of trucks, including:

• Liquids
• Semi-solids
• Solid wastes

Our drivers are highly trained professionals who understand how to work with industrial waste and logistics personnel.  Our certified on-site scales ensure accurate weighing of each load.  Each month’s invoice will include copies of each incoming truck’s weigh ticket so you’ll always have accurate accounting of each load.

Royal Oak can provide collection containers of any shape or size that will ensure that industrial operations are not affected by waste disposal constraints.  These containers, which are available for a modest rental fee, will be picked up by Royal Oak drivers and a clean, empty container left behind within 24 - 48 hours of notification by the industry.  We can also haul wastes on a 24-hour, 7-day basis as needed.

The process we use to provide industrial recycling services is designed to ensure a good working relationship with a generator.

We meet with industrial representatives at the waste generation source to:

• Review the Feedstock Acceptance Protocol,
• Obtain waste characterization data,
• Tour the facility to review waste handling procedures, and
• Obtain a sample of the waste;Send the sample to a certified laboratory for compostability parameters (Carbon, Nitrogen, Moisture, Soluble Salts);

If the feedstock is determined to be acceptable, we will offer a written proposal to recycle the waste based on a competitive processing fee and, if desired, transportation fees.  Once the proposal is accepted, will offer a contract (minimum one year, preferably three to five years) for waste recycling services.  Royal Oak Farm is fully insured and will provide a Certificate of Insurance upon request.

Feedstock Acceptance Protocol

Royal Oak Farm Composting Facility operates under a permit that may require regulatory pre-approval or permit modification for each new waste stream accepted for processing.  The company’s internal pre-acceptance protocols have been approved by the Virginia DEQ for pre-acceptance evaluation. Click here for a PDF file copy of our Feedstock Acceptance Protocol.

The following steps make up the pre-acceptance protocol:

Analytical Review

In order to insure all finished composts meet or exceed DEQ standards and Royal Oak Farm product quality requirements, no feedstock is accepted by Royal Oak Farm that cannot meet the acceptable standards for toxicity, including metals. 

Royal Oak Farm will arrange for the waste generator to provide laboratory analyses of the feedstocks for the parameters included in the attached Feedstock Analytical Review form.  In addition to issues related to quality of finished compost products, laboratory tests may also provide data related to toxins, corrosivity and ignitability, nutrient content, calcium carbonate equivalency, percent solids, and other factors that influence recipe development and compost manufacturing.

Royal Oak Farm will also ask for a one-gallon plastic bag filled 75% full with the candidate feedstock material.  This will be sent to a laboratory, at Royal Oak’s expense, for testing of compostability parameters, like Total Nitrogen, Total Carbon, moisture and soluble salts.  All results will be reported to Royal Oak Farm for review and approval.  Copies of any laboratory analyses will be provided to the source generator and to Virginia DEQ (if a permit modification is needed to handle the waste).

Compost Recipe Review

Royal Oak Farm shall complete a Compost Recipe analysis of the proposed feedstock in accordance with our Compost Recipe Model to determine that the proposed feedstock will not compromise either mixture C:N ratios nor mixture moisture contents.  Royal Oak shall also review the Feedstock Analytical Form to ensure no constituents in the feedstock will endanger compost quality.

Pilot Scale Evaluation

For a new type of feedstock material, a pilot scale evaluation may be warranted, as determined by Royal Oak Farm.  Once analytical standards have been verified, an appropriate quantity of the proposed feedstock would be obtained from the generator composted to:

• Verify the wastes’ handling characteristics;
• Verify the feedstock is suitable for aerobic composting; 
• Develop a feedstock profile to be used in processing the waste stream; and,
• Test any special amendments, bulking agents, handling, or processing systems that may be required to successfully process the feedstock.

All pilot-scale evaluations shall be conducted by Royal Oak Farm.  Pilot test results will be made available only to the source generator and to Virginia DEQ (if needed for a permit modification).

Generator File Review and Meeting

Once analytical compliance has been verified and pilot scale studies successfully completed, if needed, Royal Oak Farm may conduct a review of the generator's file located in the offices of the agency of regulatory jurisdiction.  The purpose of this procedure is to verify that the analyses provided by the generator for pre-acceptance are historically representative and consistent, and that there are no variations or fluctuations in feedstock quality that might adversely affect Royal Oak’s ability to process the waste or find beneficial reuse for the resulting compost product(s).

Representatives of Royal Oak Farm will also ask for a meeting at the generator’s location so as to verify waste handling, loading and transport conditions and to establish a face-to-face working relationship with key personnel of the generator.  This will help ensure a good relationship for conducting business.

Royal Oak Farm, LLC offers Virginia businesses, industries and municipalities a safe, reliable, reputable way of recycling clean, biodegradable, non-toxic, non-hazardous wastes.

For more information about Royal Oak Farm’s Industrial Organic Waste Recycling Services, please contact either:

Mr. Ken Newman
Managing Member
(540) 297-3299
(434) 610-2328 (cell)
royaloakfarmllc@hughes.net