Household composting picks up in Mysuru

A couple of households in the city have begun practicing home composting using earthern pots which involves simple steps. The main advantage of home composting is that it vastly reduces the amount of waste reaching landfills and the compost thus generated can be reused for gardening.

In this way they have chalked out best way to reduce the landfills, highlighting the importance of 3Rs namely reduce, reuse, recycle.

Those who are already practicing home composting say it is the best way to recycle kitchen and garden wastes, which indeed provides a good nutrient for soil and helps in organic gardening.

Even those who don't have gardens can have the compost pits in which they can recycle the wet waste. With this, the citizens can contribute to create zero waste society by home composting and recycling.

The composting can be done either in the open pits in the garden or any aerated containers. All that is required is just three pots tied together for the wastes to compost. For a family of 4, around 0.3kg/day of wet waste can be filled in first pot for a month.

The second empty pot is placed on the top after the first first is full. It can be emptied into last pot and let it stay for another month. Earthy sweet smelling compost is ready in three months which can be used as fertilizer for the plants. Wastes generated in kitchen such as dried flowers, coffee/tea waste and in general anything that decays can be composted.

Citizen Neethi who is composting wet wastes at home for past five years says: 'Garbage can be a great resource if it is recycled effectively, I have stopped handing over wet wastes to garbage collector while only the dry wastes is being disposed of once in a week.'

'For the past 8 months, I am composting using biobin (set of three earthen pots). It is a wonderful feeling that my wet wastes doesn't end up in a landfill.' She is also trying to compost meat waste by crushing the bones. 

Dr Nandakumar, a resident of Vijayanagar who is using biobin (earthern pots) for the past six months says: 'Biobins are very handy to manage wet waste. We get good manure, once in every 25 days which we use for gardening. For urban life these earthen pots are a boon, which are odur free, environmentally friendly, and are very convenient.'

Sindhu Suresh a resident of Kuvempunagar says: 'The home compost unit is very friendly, and more women should practice. This also reduces dependency on the collectors as dry waste can be given even weekly once.'

V-Parisara, a subsidiary of V-Lead of the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement is actively engaged in creating awareness amongst public about segregation of waste and home composting in city.

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Know about balancing

* Greens: Nitrogen component - Fresh kitchen waste like vegetable scraps, fruit peels, egg shells, tea/coffee powder etc.

* Browns: Carbon component - Dry leaves/straw, saw dust, shredded waste paper

* Air: Turn the pile once or twice a week to allow aeration.

* Moisture: Right amount of water sprinkled just to moisten the waste.

To accelerate composting we can use EM solution (Or sourcurds /Cowdung) which removes foul odour.