CAMILLUS — The Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency (OCRRA) has expanded its compost site in the Amboy section of Camillus, following what the agency called “an extensive remodel.”

OCRRA actually reopened the facility at 6296 Airport Road last November after completing work on the $2.4 million Aerated Static Pile compost system, according to an OCRRA news release.

OCRRA also invested an additional $2 million in heavy equipment to manage the incoming organic materials, the agency said in a follow-up email message. 

The organization self-financed the project and has applied for a grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation that would reimburse OCRRA for 50 percent of the development costs.

The renovation work has transformed the Amboy site into New York’s “largest municipal food scrap [and] yard-waste composting facility,” OCRRA contended in the news release.

The agency held a reception May 8 to mark the formal reopening.

OCRRA used the event to highlight its efforts to keep commercial and institutional food scraps out of the trash. The Amboy site recycles food scraps into soil amendment, or what is also known as compost.

The system is designed to process more than 9,000 tons of local institutional and commercial food scraps a year and will generate more than 30,000 yards of compost annually.

Engineers in the Cazenovia office of Australia–based GHD designed the facility, according to OCRRA.

Since reopening in November, the Amboy compost facility is processing more than 50,000 pounds of food scraps on a weekly basis. The scraps are turned into a soil amendment that meets the U.S. Composting Council’s Seal of Testing Assurance, according to the news release.

Compost returns “valuable” nutrients to the soil and “improves” the environment when used in gardens, landscapes, and green infrastructure projects, OCRRA said.

Haulers deliver food scraps from local businesses or nonprofits, including Syracuse University, Destiny USA, Upstate University Hospital, Wegmans, Ramada Inn, the Oncenter, the Marcellus Central School District, and Pastabilities, a restaurant in Armory Square. 

OCRRA then uses technology, such as a Crambo shredder, in a process that recycles food scraps into finely-screened compost.

The agency contends its process is “roughly 80 percent more efficient than other approaches,” noting it takes only 60 days to create OCRRA compost instead of the usual 270 days.

The compost is available for purchase in bulk at both the Amboy and Jamesville compost facilities and at more than a dozen local retailers.

At 15 percent, food scraps are currently the largest component of trash that is not mandated for recycling, Greg Gelewski, OCRRA recycling-operations manager, said in the news release.

He was among the speakers at the opening reception.

“We’ll be moving on and taking that lost resource and creating a resource and putting it back into our soils, [from] closing that loop for our generators to closing that loop for our soils that we deplete,” Gelewski said.

The OCRRA facility turns food scraps into compost that revitalizes local soil and grows healthy plants and vegetables that eventually become food scraps again, Gelewski said. 

The system mixes food waste in a 3:1 ratio with a bulking agent (yard waste and wood chips), according to the OCRRA website. 

It is then arranged in long concrete bunkers that have a system of pipes running beneath them. 

Electric blowers that pump air through the piles at scheduled intervals power the pipes, the website says. The pipes allow air to circulate through the piles and create “optimal” conditions for decomposition.

After the food waste has decomposed and has met all of the temperature and monitoring requirements, the finished compost is screened for use as a soil amendment and sold to the community. 

The event’s speakers also included Lori Scozzafava, executive director of the Bethesda, Md.–based U.S. Composting Council, who congratulated OCRRA on the project. 

“I know a lot of work has gone into this effort, building a well-run operation and expanding it to include food scraps is a phenomenal issue, and I truly believe that Onondaga County will be better off for having this facility in place,” Scozzafava said in her remarks during the event. 

OCRRA is a public-benefit corporation that manages a solid waste, recycling, and composting system.       

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

DeWITT — Infinit Technology Solutions has relocated to a new facility in DeWitt that doubles its space, and has plans for additional hiring under its new business strategy.

“The primary reason to make the move was so that we can grow … so that we can have the room to hire more sales people,” says Thomas (Tom) Klink, Jr., president of Infinit Technology Solutions. 

Infinit describes itself as a provider of information-technology products in voice and data-network hardware and software, network assessment, security assessments, and associated professional engineering, hosted and managed services.

Phil Taurisano owns Infinit Technology Solutions.

The firm moved to its new 16,000-square-foot place at 7037 Fly Road in DeWitt in January. It previously operated in a 6,000-square-foot space at 5786 Widewaters Parkway in DeWitt, Klink says.

The firm leases its space from Fly Road Development.

The company currently employs 32 people, including five employees that the firm hired earlier this year.

Infinit is also aiming to hire 20 additional account executives and is “always looking for the right people,” Klink says.

“We’re a sales organization … so if they got fire, hunger, and goals, we want to talk to them,” he adds.

The additional account executives are part of the firm’s overall three-year strategy, he says.

Klink joined Infinit in 2009 as director of sales, and was promoted to president in late 2011.

Klink declined to disclose revenue information about the private company. He also declined to disclose costs of the move. 

Strategic shift
In the last few years, Infinit has changed its business model to move away from its role as a company that refurbished equipment.

“Part of the business strategy is that we would partner up with manufacturers and be representatives of their product lines,” Klink says.

Its previous work in fixing, repairing, and refurbishing products wasn’t “advantageous” for Infinit because the market had too many competitors, he adds.

He figured a focus on growing new equipment sales was a better long-term strategy for Infinit.

Klink refers to the company as a “value-added reseller,” or what he likes to call a VASP — a “value-added solution provider.” 

“We do more than just resell gear. We offer services, installation, configuration, staging … managed services.”  

Infinit represents 45 manufacturers to date, including San Jose, Calif.–based Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Milwaukee, Wisc.–based HellermannTyton, and Palo Alto, Calif.–based Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), according to its website.

When Infinit moved away from its work in cleaning and refurbishing inventory, it eliminated the positions that focused on that work.

“We’re a distribution-based company, so we don’t need to have all of those in-house resources for cleaning, refurbishing inventory,” Klink says.

He was unaware of how many positions the company had previously eliminated.

Infinit has since created sales and support positions for its work in representing manufacturers’ product lines.        

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com