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SPENT MUSHROOM COMPOST Upcycling SMC offers environm
A new process developed by the family-owned company Champignon Kweke- rij Gemert (CKG) in The Netherlands not only turns spent mushroom compost into champost, a sought-after soil improver. It also results in savings of 1.5 million cubic metres of natural gas, reduces CO2 emissions and has earned CKG a 10,000 Euro prize as winner of the Biobased Economy Competition East Brabant.
By Joost van Kasteren
The idea for Champost arose from the company’s need to find an economical and environmentally friendly way of disposing of a waste product from its mushroom production operations. With champost CKG has found a way to ‘upcycle’ its waste and turn it into a valuable new product. “CKG’s initiative,” says Alderman Roël Hoppe- zak, “is a good example of how the Gemert - Bakel mu- nicipality is working to be in the forefront of developing an economy based on renewable resources.” CKG, a company founded and run by the Van den Boo- men family, grows mushrooms at the edge of the Dutch village of Gemert in South-East Brabant, and produces around 100.000 kilograms of mushrooms each week for the canning and freezing industry. “That means that every week, two of our eight cells - each slightly less than half a football field in size (1900 m2) - are filled,” says Pieter van den Boomen, who, along with his pa- rents manages the company.
Mushroom growing makes waste The mushrooms are harvested in two ‘flushes’, the first after 16 days, and the second after 24 days, by
automatic cutting blades. After the second flush, the spent compost is removed and the cell is cleaned in preparation for the next four-week growing cycle. Because each cell contains more than 160 tons of compost, the company is faced with removing around 300 to 350 tons of spent compost every week. This compost is not easy to get rid of. “The strict legislation for manure makes it difficult to find customers for spent mushroom compost (smc) in the Netherlands,” explains Pieter’s father, Hans van den Boomen. “As a result we currently export our used compost to Germany at a cost of 12 euros per tonne. Because smc consists of 60 to 70 percent of water, 7.20 of those euros are used for moving water - so finding a way to remove water from the compost seemed to be a sensible way to reduce our transport costs.”
All in the family To find the best way to do this, Hans turned for help to his brother, Henk van den Boomen, an independent consultant with many years of experience in develo- ping and building systems for composting and drying
Pieter van den Boomen in one of the growing rooms.
Sorting lines at Champignonkwekerij Gemert b.v.
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