The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Easy to manage your kitchen waste

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Feb 10, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Easy to manage your kitchen waste

Staff Reporter

Bacteria, earthworms take care of composting

ECO-FRIENDLY APPROACH: The newly-inaugurated Exnora compost park displays different methods to manage organic waste. — Photo: S. S. Kumar

Chennai : For a quick lesson on five different types of composting kitchen and garden waste, simply step into the backyard of Exnora International's office on Giriappa Road in T. Nagar.

The `compost park', inaugurated on Friday, gives visitors a hands-on experience on how to segregate waste, prepare a pre-compost bed, introduce earthworms or bacteria and obtain dry manure.

P.D. Singh, Head of HSBC (Southern India), opened the park. Exnora, with the sponsorship of HSBC, has developed the park to show which composting method is best suited for a home, office or institution. The low-cost methods can be employed using materials such as used tyres or plastic crates.

The first display is a large vat used for vermi-composting. Earthworms chomp the pre-composted waste and excrete powdery, odour-free compost.

In aerobic composting, air is allowed to circulate freely and bacteria break down the waste.

Exnora's field officer B. Paramanandan has been so successful with the cow dung composting method that snails and slugs -- found in rich garden soil -- have made their appearance in the cured waste. Most composting methods take 90 days to produce manure. However, enzyme composting takes only 15 days, Mr. Paramanandan said. This method is only for large institutions as the enzyme is costly.

Simple technique

Even apartment-dwellers who have little space to spare can compost kitchen waste using flowerpots. "Waste comes free. Bacteria, earthworms and sunshine take care of the composting. All you need to spend is a bit of your time," said Exnora Founder M. B. Nirmal. He urged the Chennai Corporation to lead by example and implement solid waste management in the Ripon Building.

The Chennai Corporation would consider replicating the compost model in its parks, said Corporation Joint Commissioner (Revenue) M. Chandrasekaran.

Also, if more individuals were to take up composting at home, it would bring down the pressure on the garbage dumping yards in the city. About 50 - 60 per cent of solid waste generated by Chennai is organic.

The public, especially school and college students, are encouraged to visit the Exnora compost park. Contact 28153377 or 52121673 for details.

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