My in-house composting PART-2

Continuing from my earlier post on this topic(PART-1), I harvested my 2nd load of 'black gold'. This time a neat ~1.3 KGs! I used some of it for in-house gardening most of it lying around...mulling what to do of it.

Some pleasant surprise sprung up on my in-house gardening front too. Seeds in my pots started germinating & flowering plants which were later classified as Green Chilies, Capsicum, Rose(brought from a nursery) and well TBH I don't know what the other plant is...waiting for the fruit/vegetable to sprout :)! Take a look at some of the pics I've shared below for reference.

I've 'planted' (thrown in rather than discard it in my wet waste) few pumpkin seeds and I've creeper crawling off that pot! I know its too early to celebrate & expect fruits (or aptly vegetables in this case ;) but the best feeling in this entire exercise for me is to see these seeds germinate and plants growing off it...all by themselves.

Wishfully I hope everyone understands the importance of SWM(Solid Waste Management) and try to implement it at their respective places. Evidently as you would have noticed by now, enthusiastic souls like me, can also graduate to trying their hands at in-house gardening...a naturally extension of your SWM effort.

With such meaningful resolution & my wishful outlook I once again pin my hopes on you to spread the word, walk the talk and get involved in making our community a better place to live in. Go Green!

Amen!

Home Grown Spinach

Nursery @ Garden

Capsicum

Rose

The Dirty Business?!

Bangalore isn't different from any growing Indian cosmopolitan city. It has all the making of one. Ill-equipped infrastructure, chaotic transportation, ever increasing human population, over used & over stretched "colonial"drainage system, garbage strewn alleys, polluted water bodies and to top it all up an indifferent human attitude to match it! That's painting the real urban settlement for you.

Garbage has been the bane of urban living ever since people living in cities started being indifferent to it. The callous attitude adopted by the city administration only added to their belief. The easy and lazy way to deal with this ever growing monster-of-garbage was dealt with by dumping it in the villages on the outskirts of our cities. Manddurr is one such place where garbage generated from Bangalore is dumped. Solid Waste Mangement (SWM) was an recent approach adopted (or rather enforced) on all without having any meaningful & well-thought plans to really make it work. Result was an as abrupt ceasing of this initiative as abruptly as it was started! I took this govt directive as a way to try my hand at this wonderful concept of SWM to try reduce my garbage footprint(if there is anything like that). In my 10+ months of implementation, I'm throughly convinced about the effectiveness of this concept. I've not put out a single (I repeat NOT a SINGLE) basket of green waste from my home for collection! Details here.

Recently I "harvested" my 2nd load of "Black Gold" as I like to call it. A neat ~700 gms of it. I intend to sell it and monetize it...obviously not to make a living out of it, but to break even and cover my operational cost, in this new venture of mine ;) I also wish this motivates others to start looking at dealing with SWM and help reduce their garbage foot-print. I'm sure this would get lot of people interested in this and I believe some number crunches are already at it...calculating how much money I would make out of it...with this kind of sustained "output".  Imagine for a moment here, I making a profit and being able to sustain part of my lifestyle on the profits made from this! Then I would be referred to as a businessman...a man making money from The Dirty Business?!

Amen!

Composting: My in-house success story

Hello friends,

By now you all might be aware and part of govt’s “progressive initiative” on Solid Waste Management(SWM)…assuming most(if not all) of you might be practicing it in your respective apt more out of compulsion than interest :)

Trivia:

I've been diligently following this practice for more than a decade now.

Idea:

(OK enough blowing my own trumpet :)

Coming back to the point of this mail, earlier (prior to govt notice), as was my usual practice I used to segregate my waste into separate “bio-degradable” bags and hand it over to my apt house-keeping staff for disposal; which was ending up in one big rubbish bin…thus nullifying my efforts!

Then this govt notice came across and the one thing I changed was to get myself a Daily Dump(DD) “starter-kit” for a very nominal amount(Ref figs below:- (a)Small Kambha & (b)Pots).

The idea was to try composting my kitchen waste(ref figs (d1, d2, d3) in-house (rather than “burden” govt appointed garbage collecting contractors who had no regards to cleanliness and was often seen being more trouble than any help to our community).

Now:

Post kick-starting my composting drive, the only waste being sent out is dry waste(collected once-a-week in my apt).

This has drastically cut-down(almost 85%) my waste load being sent out… at least from my flat.

After almost 5 months of composting, I can proudly declare it to be a grand success! (Ref fig (c)-Finished Compost)

In case you too are deliberating on similar lines, I strongly recommend you to try it first hand to see for yourself the ease & simplicity of this process.

Request:

Imagine if the same is replicated at apt level(or for that matter of dreaming…at our community level).

We are talking about 85% less garbage being shipped out!!! Phenomenal don’t you think?

With these dreamy eyes, I humbly request & encourage you to try this at your respective flat/apt level and reap the benefits of it.

Resource:

More details on DailyDump @  http://dailydump.org/

Amen!

(d1)Kitchen Waste

(d2)Kitchen Waste in Pot

(d3)Composting in progress

(a) Small Kambha

(b) Pots

(c) Finished compost