Organic farming is one of the best solutions to lead a healthy lifestyle in this era of chemical injected food. However, while we only end up criticizing synthetically food growing techniques, this society from Mumbai has already been undertaking organic farming by recycling their bio-degradable (wet) waste into organic Manure.

Malhar Co-operative Housing Society (CHS) from Goregaon, Mumbai has been recycling the wet waste collected from the society’s habitants and converting it into organic manure. The society has been undertaking this habit since one and a half year now. They have been able to recycle More than four tonnes of wet waste and produced 400 kg of organic manure out of it. This manure is used to nourish the 350 Sq Ft vegetables and fruits garden situated in the society’s campus.

HB Singh is one of the primary activist, who was behind the success of this operation.he says that the residents have been segregating the waste since the past few years into wet and dry waste. However, it was not being used appropriately. “It was until 26 January 2018 that all the 72 households in the society mutually decided to formalise this process. We wanted to reduce the waste that we sent to the Municipal Corporation and ultimately the landfills,” says Singh.

From Wet Waste to manure

The residents collaborated with RUR GreenLife to install a manually-operated aerobic bio-composter unit. RUR GreenLife is a Mumbai based organization of waste management experts. The cost of setting up the unit came to around Rs. 1.5 lakh. The unit has a total capacity of holding 400 kgs of waste. It uses zero-electricity to run the natural process of composting. This unit enables the residents of the society to recycle up to 90% of their segregated waste.

As further explained by Singh, the society generates around 30 Kgs of segregated wet waste daily, of which around 15 to 20 kg is put into the recycling plant along with some dry bio-degradable waste such as leaves, etc. The plant consists of two drums, each having a capacity of 200 Kg. After dumping the waste in the drum and leaving it there for 18-20 days, the two drums are rotated with the help of a gear. It takes 4 weeks for the wet waste to break down into manure. Afterwards, the manure is shovelled out and left to dry, cured and shaved.

The process produces manure in liquid and solid-state. Liquid manure is used to fertilise the vegetable-and-fruit-garden. The garden is lushed with tomatoes, chillies, & many other greens. The solid manure is packed in one kg packets and sold to the residents at Rs. 30 per kg to be used in household plants and herbs. The money yielded from the sale of the solid manure is used to pay the housekeeping staff of the system.

RUR-GreenLife (Are You Reducing Reusing Recycling), the experts behind the plant installation, trained the housekeeping staff for one composting cycle regarding operation and maintenance of the system.

7 bin system for Dry Waste

Apart from wet waste, RUR GreenLife endorsed society with an idea of dealing with dry waste as well. They advised the residents to adopt the seven-bin system.

In this system, the society will maintain 7 bins to segregate the dry waste in seven different categories viz e-waste, paper, hard plastic, soft plastic, metal, glass and tetra pack cartons. This segregated waste is sold to scrap dealers or recyclers. The contribution collected from the same is also given to the housekeeping staff as an incentive.

What Else are they doing?

The society made a bench by recycling 10,000 Tetra Pak cartons. It was made under the ‘Go Green with Tetra Pak Recycling’ programme, which was also a brainchild of RUR GreenLife and Tetra Pak India. The society has installed the chair in the campus only to promote recycling habits and environmental friendly ideology amongst the residents and the visitors.

Further, the manure recycling system installed in society has helped the residents to reduce the regular CO2 generation & emission. It is reduced by around 70 Kgs. This is for every time the waste is taken from the collection point to the landfills.

“With over 70+ community composting projects like Malhar society, we are successfully recycling over 400 tonnes of biowaste annually into nutrient-rich organic compost to increase green cover in urban areas. It’s been a wonderful year and a half with Malhar and its green champions. It’s gratifying to see seasonal veggies and medicinal plants grown in the heart of the city using the compost generated from kitchen waste. We look forward to spreading the green practices and replicate the Malhar model in many more communities,” said Monsha Narke, Founder & CEO of RUR GreenLife in a conversation with “The Better India.

The society conveyed a message that if Indians sincerely wants to pursue “Swacch Bharat Abhiyan”, then we all need to make efforts to contribute to the cause of waste management.

Source: https://www.thebetterindia.com/