Composting Connections from Haida Gwaii
October 22, 2025
By Kayla
I recently had the valuable opportunity to see a medium scale community composting facility in operation in Old Masset on Haida Gwaii during a personal holiday. The community there has about 80 households filling 5-gallon buckets with food scraps from their kitchen, and then employees of the project pick up the bucket contents and bring them back to their EarthFlow composter – “an automated compost mixing and aeration system” inside a shipping container. Food waste is added to the shipping container, an auger breaks up and mixes the materials, automated irrigation can be toggled on and off depending on the moisture level of the feedstock, gases and emissions are captured in a biofilter before being released outside. While the community in Old Masset is still honing their process of storage, curing and use for the finished compost, they are excited that they are diverting a lot of waste from their landfill! Through this program they are building community, creating climate resilience as they process their own waste, creating a valuable soil amendment to nourish their sandy soils, and they are creating valuable employment opportunities for community members. I loved seeing this project in action and seeing Dave’s market garden where some of the finished compost is completing its curation phase.
Thank you so much to Calvin and Trudy and Filene from the Indigenous Zero Waste Technical Advisory Group for connecting me to Dave and for supporting such a great community scale composting operation in Old Masset. I’m very happy to hear that IZWTAG is also supporting many other composting systems of this scale across the province in different communities. Thank you to Dave for showing me around his market garden and garden scale composting operation and showing me the EarthFlow composter in action in Old Masset.
I feel so inspired to be connected to a wider community of people who care about stewarding the soil, reducing methane emissions from landfill, and building community resilience. Us compost keeners are everywhere 😉
