Good VIBES for salmon farmer’s recycling efforts
Scottish Sea Farms’ work to recycle hatchery waste into agricultural fertiliser has been recognised with a VIBES Scottish Environment Business Award.
The salmon farmer was praised by the award organisers for its work to capture fish waste from its £58 million salmon hatchery at Barcaldine, near Oban, and recycle it as fertiliser for land farmers.
SSF uses technology by Norwegian engineering company Scanship to aerate waste such as fish faeces and uneaten feed to prevent any unwanted bacteria from germinating, then binds it together into larger particles via the addition of a cationic polymer.
The waste is then filtered to separate the solids from the water and the resulting sludge is collected in a storage tank.
Safe and suitable
Invergordon-based waste management company Rock Highland, part of the Avanti Environmental Group, ensures the sludge is both safe and suitable for agricultural land.
Once the sludge has been certified as being safe, it is then uplifted by tractor and barrel for use on farmland.
SSF’s freshwater team is now developing phase two of its fish waste recycling plans, with the goal of removing the remaining water content and converting the sludge into dry pellets.
“The benefit to the environment of moving from wet to dry form longer-term would be a reduction in the volume of waste material, thereby reducing the number of tankers and road miles required to transport it from hatchery to farmland,” said Ewen Leslie, lead engineer at the hatchery.
“For land farmers, dry form would provide an even more nutritional and valuable natural fertiliser alternative that’s easy to handle.”
Adapting to Covid
The VIBES Scottish Environment Business Awards are a partnership between Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), the Scottish Government, Energy Saving Trust, Highland & Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Water, Zero Waste Scotland and NatureScot (formerly Scottish Natural Heritage).
This year VIBES Award judges used different criteria, and took into account how much companies had adapted their way of working, products or services as a consequence of Covid-19 or have continued to progress low carbon opportunities despite the pandemic.
Like other primary food producers, SSF has continued to operate throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, adapting shift patterns at its farms and introducing social distancing precautions at all workplaces, including on shore.
