In 2022, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Backyard’s Sustainability staff, led by Stephenie Ritchey and Mallory Geresy, was awarded a Recycle Ohio EPA grant to accumulate tools for our award-winning Horticulture staff. The Cincinnati Zoo’s Inexperienced Waste Recycling Program (GWRP) was put in place as a part of our Zero-Waste initiatives, to course of horticultural waste and particles into value-add mulching merchandise for use in our gardens and group initiatives.
The aim of this award was to additional the GWRP and provide the Horticulture staff with a towable Bandit Mannequin 1425 Mini Beast horizontal grinder. This machine reduces inexperienced waste quantity by 75% or extra by processing bamboo stalks, elephant grass, tree branches, logs, herbaceous waste, woody waste, pallets, and many others. This creates a readily useable product, retains used area at a minimal, eliminates the necessity to haul inexperienced waste (decreasing emissions and transportation prices), and will help scale back irrigation wants by offsetting a few of our annual mulch purchases.
Yearly, we produce about 1,080 cubic yards of inexperienced waste, accounting for about 25% of our whole waste quantity. Traditionally, we’ve managed this waste by giant, on-site mulching piles or, in particular circumstances, by third-party hauling to off-site mulching amenities. Nonetheless, with the event of latest animal habitats, we now not have the area for giant on-site piles.
The Cincinnati Zoo piloted the Mini Beast within the spring of 2022, and it proved to achieve success at processing almost all of the waste that we trialed as enter, together with bamboo stalks, elephant grass, tree branches, logs, herbaceous waste, woody waste, pallets, and many others. We processed about 60 cubic yards of waste in roughly 4 hours. We noticed a quantity discount charge of about 75%. With the usage of the two”-round display, we have been in a position to produce a mulch a lot finer than our bought mulch. We have been very happy with the efficiency and flexibility of the Mini Beast and finalized its keystone function within the GWRP!
