Sayre Borough started a major upgrade of its recycling program earlier this year as a result of an Act 101 of 1988 compliance inspection from the Department of Environmental Protection. One of the facets of this program is composting. To date, organic material was simply dumped on the Department of Public Works (DPW) lot and left there. Now and then, when time permitted, the DPW guys would turn the piles to encourage composting, but little else was 
done. One of the recommendations form the inspection was to get equipment to separate the compost from the rocks, pieces of wood, trees and other materials.
Today, I attended a demonstration of one such machine (photo at upper left), which is called a trommel. The material is dumped in the top of the machine where it enters a rotating screen drum.
The fine material falls through the screen onto a conveyor belt that dumps the screened material out on one end (photo at right) while all the rocks, garbage, and uncomposted materials fall out on the other end.
The screened material looks to be very good compost and should make a good product. I don’t know what we will do with the trash material (photo at lower left) that it removes. That stuff is an odd mix of organic material (pine cones, pieces of wood, etc) and garbage.
We hope to rent it for at least a month, if it isn’t too costly, and tackle all the piles of material on the DPW lot. We estimate that we will need at least one person for that time to clear the facility. For its size, it seems remarkably easy to operate – it comes with a remote control so the back hoe operator can work from the cab of the machine while controlling the trommel.
