Clearwater County, MN was able to obtain a 5-year old refurbished Sani-Tech ST2054/40 through DMH Services/American Services Corp., New Hope, MN at a cost that made the upgrade cost-effective even with our relatively low waste volume. Seeing the results, even a new compactor would have been well worth the investment.
The application is a County owned and operated transfer facility where the Sani-Tech unit is used to compact problem MSW (Municipal Solid Waste) waste items such as mattresses, furniture, treated wood, large plastic items, etc. - basically, MSW that’s too big to go in the household trash – into a 47 yard compactor box for shipment to an MSW landfill 60 miles away.
The County was previously loading and packing the waste as much as possible into open 40 yd. roll-off containers using a large skid-steer loader and getting at best 3 ½ to 4 tons into each container. The Sani-Tech compactor container weight has been in the range of 10 to 12 tons with this material so now our shipping weight is pushing the top end of our hauler’s maximum 15-ton load when he uses a pup trailer to tow along one of the open-tops that we still use for material we don’t want to run through the compactor such as railroad ties.
Prior to purchasing the Sani-Tech, our best load weight was not more than 8 tons, so in our case the haul cost was cut by at least one-third and close to one-half!
Even for our rather small facility and small residential population the facility serves, we’re saving nearly $10,000 annually in shipping cost to get about 200 tons on average per year of this waste to the landfill.
In addition, the auger does the work to compact the waste which saves a lot of fuel, time, and wear and tear on the loader and operator that was doing that work before. A lot of small facilities in rural areas like Clearwater County operate in many ways inefficiently because the budget doesn’t allow for good equipment, but this investment was the “low-hanging fruit”, so to speak, in the list of available ways to improve our operation.
Dan Hecht, Administrator
Clearwater County Environmental Services, MN