What others do with domestic waste

While a “corporate approach” has worked well for the apartment complex, enthusing students to participate has helped D G Vaishnav College to manage its waste for the past 18 months. What started as a simple compost pit in a vacant land behind the college has now evolved into Rs.4.5-lakh vermicompost shed which not only generates manure for vegetables from the college for its canteen but also gets small returns for the conservancy staff. “When the NSS volunteers were trained to conduct an audit and they were enthused to take up the project,” says M.Veliappan, Programme Officer, Exnora International, T. Nagar.
The project began with collecting canteen waste and teaching the students to drop waste in dustbins. The college conservancy staff segregates the waste. When the college built a shed for vermicomposting, Mr. Veliappan's effort paid off. “The college has developed a garden and a banana grove. We get around 100 to 150 kg of biodegradable waste and the compost is used for trees in the campus,” he says. Paper, plastic, laboratory waste, bottles and packing material from the college are segregated and disposed of by the conservancy staff, who share the proceeds among themselves.
The Madras Institute of Technology, Chromepet, is also building compost sheds, Mr. Veliappan says.

Source : The Hindu

Vermicomposting kitchen waste

An earlier post in the blog - Talking trash, vermicomposting - done some two months back hasn't evoked any response from PropCare. And, it must be admitted, there was no further effort on our part,as residents,to push the waste disposal agenda. This post is prompted by an article in The Hindu - Segregating waste can generate income - that refers to vermicomposting taken up by residents in Alwarpet.
At Venus Colony, Alwarpet, with 175 apartments they have a vermicompost shed, from which they generate adequate manure to fertilize plants and the green patch in their 2.25 acre residential complex.The Venus Colony residents association built a composting shed with four compartments for collection of kitchen and garden waste. The association,which has been vermicomposting kitchen waste for the last five years,is engaged, at the same time, in creating public awareness and educating residents on the need for segregating household waste to enable their disposal in a meaningful,and also productive, way.
Wouldn't it be worth our while to visit Venus Colony and meet with the residents association ? Contact person - Mr K V Ananthakrishna Iyer, manager, Asiana Flat Owners Association in Venus Colony, Alwarpet.

Talking trash, vermicomposting

Our trash have raddi (resale) value - old newspapers, bottles, plastic cans, and tins. And most residents have self-interest in sorting out reuseables and recyclables from rest of our domestic waste. What we need at Mantris is a reliable raddiwalah who can collect saleable waste from our door-front.
PropCare, which has outsourced house-keeping to MTS can talk to them about creating a business model for waste collection and disposal. The raddi dues payable to individual residents can be adjusted against the monthly bill sent to them for supply of milk, water, newspaper by MTS.
Under the present system the MTS house-keeping staff collect kitchen waste from each flat around 9 a m daily. I don't know how they dispose it.
If PropCare is amenable , I would suggest vermicomposting. This article in Green living tips gives us a sense of putting earthworms to work for converting our kitchen waste into organic manure. This can be used in our landscaped area. Surplus manure can be sold.