Urban News

The Hindu 07.04.2010

Waste management begins at home

K.V. Prasad

Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

SIGNIFICANT STEP:N. Tamilselvi (right), Councillor representing Ward 34 of Coimbatore Corporation, explains the composting-at-home process.

COIMBATORE: At a time when the Coimbatore Corporation is embarking upon a massive solid waste management project to dispose of nearly 800 tonnes of waste a day, a micro-level effort is taking shape in Ward 43 to reduce the amount of waste transferred from a house to the Corporation's community bins.

Ward councillor N. Tamilselvi has initiated the practice of home composting that can be done in apartments and even small line houses. Demonstrating it at her first floor house, Ms. Tamilselvi points out that space can never be a constraint to waste reduction.

The councillor demonstrates a three-pot system of converting vegetable waste into manure through a simple procedure. But, she points out that only raw vegetable waste should be used and not cooked ones.

Salt

“Salt in the cooked vegetable waste will spoil the entire process. It will not facilitate composting,” she says.

Layers of onion peel, chopped waste of greens and other vegetables and egg shells are sprinkled with cow dung slurry in a pot of 15 kg capacity. The waste decomposes and turns into manure. It is then transferred to another pot, with the layers' position getting shuffled in the process. This enables complete composting.

The manure is then put through a sieve on its way to the third pot where it will acquire the form of fine manure.

Ms. Tamilselvi says she has done a short-term course in waste management at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. “While Corporation Commissioner Anshul Mishra provides immense encouragement to good waste management practices, environmental scientist at the university P. Subramaniam provides constant guidance,” she says.

After the course, she studied the waste generation in her ward and found that it was 300 gm a person a day. A family of five generates 1.5 kg. This is taken as the average raw kitchen waste generation for home composting.

The process of filling the first pot goes on for 10 days. Each layer of 1.5 kg of waste a day is sprinkled with the cow dung slurry.

After 10 days, this is transferred to the second pot and allowed to dry up as manure. “If the vegetable waste is cut into fine pieces, the transformation into manure will be faster,” she says.

At present, 30 houses in her ward have offered to join the ward-level project after being trained by her. The ward is among the nine (out of the total 72) in the city that have been chosen by the Corporation as model wards for waste management. “I am willing to teach this to more people in the city free of cost because this concept has to catch on,” she says.

This type of composting will reduce the burden of waste management on the Corporation. Hotels and other eateries too can practice this, she says. “When building plans are submitted to the Corporation, the civic body can insist on such basic, micro-level waste management as a condition for approval,” she suggests.

“This too can be made mandatory as parking space and rain water harvesting. It is not expensive and the manure can fetch money. Two kg of waste can be produced out of 15 kg of waste. A 15 kg pot costs only Rs.60 and the sieve costs Rs.30. The manure can be sold at Rs.2 a kg,” she explains.

Uzhavar Sandhais can make the best out of this concept. The shandies can have composting pits instead of pots because of the high volume of vegetable waste, she says.

People think that the worms in the composting pot will cause health problems. “The worms will remain always at the base of the pot. They will not come to the surface. One can even have food, sitting near the pots. No stench comes from these,” she contends.

The Hindu 24.03.2010

Public hearing on solid waste processing facility

Ajai Sreevatsan

CHENNAI: A public hearing will be held on Tuesday on a Chennai Corporation proposal for setting up an integrated solid waste processing facility within the Perungudi dump yard, at Raja Kalyana Mandapam in Velachery.

Environmentalists and residents claim that the plan to set up a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) unit in the dump yard would further worsen the situation.

The project involves segregation, composting of organic material, pelletisation of refuse and using it as fuel for power generation through incineration, and land filling of the non-degradable waste.

“The proposal allows the Corporation to bring in mixed waste to the site which will defeat the need for source segregation and segregated waste transportation. These are important parts of Municipal Solid Waste (2000) Rules,” said K. Periasamy, president, Sri Sai Nagar Residents Association. “The executive summary of the project also states that the Corporation shall provide 1,400 tonnes of garbage per day to keep the plant running and this will perpetuate the concept of mixed garbage.”

An Expert Committee, set up by the High Court to look into the issue of garbage dumping at Perungudi, in its final report says, “The present site is not suitable for dumping of municipal solid waste” and siting any other facility in the location “is a violation of the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 2000 and The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (1971).”

Gopal Kishore of Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives said, “Any RDF plant involves incineration and it can pose a serious threat to residents by leaving behind persistent organic pollutants like dioxin.”

Chennai Corporation Commissioner Rajesh Lakhoni said that since source segregation will take some time, parallel measures have to be taken in the meantime. “Similar projects have been approved by the Pollution Control Board and incineration will happen in cement kilns at more than 800 degree Celsius. There will be 100 per cent environmental compliance.”