Tripunithura Municipality’s effort to solve organic waste management at source through pipe-composting seems to have gone awry.

Nearly
five months ago, pipe-composting units were installed at many
households after the Municipality ordered Kudumbashree workers to stop
collecting waste.

The initiative was aimed at
reducing waste generated in the municipality. However, residents now
have to deal with smelly backyards and hundreds of worms crawling inside
their pipe-composting units.

Bindu S., a lecturer
and resident of Inside Fort area, says a unit which consists of two PVC
pipes with a width of six inches, buried vertically in 30-cm-deep pits,
are inadequate to meet the needs of even a four-member family. “The
pipes fill up in no time.”

She says the waste put into the pipes do not seem to get decomposed.

“We
were told that the waste would decompose and could be used as manure.
But we are left with a nauseating smell in the backyard. Our neighbours
cannot enter their own backyard,” she says.

Ms. Bindu
has not touched the pipes for nearly a month now. “I try to bury the
day’s waste in small pits. I cannot imagine what is going to happen when
it rains.”

Thankamani Sukumaran, a housewife and
resident of Kannankulangara, grinds her kitchen waste and flushes it
down the drain in the sink. “We resort to this method while we wait for
the waste in the pipes to decompose. What do we do otherwise, we have to
manage somehow.”

The awareness classes held at
residents’ association meetings never guaranteed that the pipes would
solve our waste management problem. The whole initiative was probably an
ad hoc mechanism adopted by the Municipality to stop waste collection
by the Kudumbashree, Ms. Sukumaran says.

“The
re-appearance of bags filled with waste on various street corners is the
result of the failure of the pipe composting units,” says Ravindra
Kurup, vice-president, Kottakagam Residents’ Association.

The waste is not getting decomposed because even when the second pipe is being used, the waste in first pipe does not dry up.

People
have been saddled with an ad hoc arrangement even when the municipal
council was advised against adopting this system, says Mohana Chandran, a
waste management expert. Mr. Chandran had been involved in taking
awareness classes for residents through residents’ associations. He told
The Hindu
that he had warned the council about the failure of the system.

“The
waste gets decomposed only when there is air circulation in the pipes,
and the water content remains not more than 50 per cent,” says Mr.
Chandran, who is a deputy manager at BPCL.

“Bacteria
cannot act when there is high water content. Most of the kitchen waste
have a good amount of water.” Due to the small width of the pipe, it is
difficult to put waste. Only a part of the waste gets decomposed and the
rest is infested with worms.

“The smell of the decayed waste is sickening,” he says.

Pipe-composting
is based on ring composting practised traditionally. “The units have
met with little success as there is very little soil contact. Someone
has to take extra care to keep churning the waste and not to close the
lid too tightly,” he says.

R. Venugopal, chairman, Tripunithura municipality, said he did not receive any complaints regarding the pipe composting units.

Tripunithura town, at present, collects two loads of waste every day from hotels and shops, which is taken to Brahmapuram.