The Trash Cash boxes are here !
In goes your kitchen waste, out comes compost
(It needs some preparatory work such as the right
placement, a shade to protect from direct rainfall and a small elevation to allow for
moisture control)
In what could potentially revolutionise the solid waste management scene in Chennai, and elsewhere, a home composter has been produced that uses absolutely nothing but your garbage - vegetable refuse from the kitchen - and turns it into extremely useful compost.
After the enactment of solid waste management rules in 2000 by the Central Government, to conform to Supreme Court directions, there is a greater awareness about composting. However, urban local bodies like Municipal Corporations and Municipalities have not undertaken major schemes to implement the rules that are based on sustainability concepts. That list of defaulters includes the Chennai Corporation and the bigger suburban municipalities such as Alandur, Ambattur and Thiruvottiyur and Avadi. Ironically, the Tamil Nadu Government has been supportive of sustainability schemes for solid waste in Vellore town, where composting activity has a proven record as an employment generator and the product - compost - a cashable commodity purchased by the Forest Department of the State.
For long, there was a demand for an off the shelf home composter that would be useful in apartment complexes, individual houses and business establishments. The answer has come from S.S.Kannan, working as Chief Co-ordinator at Exnora International's Micro Enterprise in Chennai, India.
Kannan has turned junk plastic bins into home and garden composters, and put some on view at the 42, Giriappa Road, T.Nagar, headquarters of EI, in South Chennai.
Most apartment blocks can afford the Rs.300 or so that the composters cost. They fit in neatly into a corner of an apartment complex or garden. They require no active involvement on the part of the residents and only the careful management of organic waste dumped into it. It would naturally be preferably to place such a bin with organic waste in an airy place, where decomposition can be efficient. Use of microbial inoculum can hasten the process. Semi-composted matter can also be shifted to a vermicompost bin to complete the composting process and this method would produce better quality compost
Contact Exnora at 42 (New No.20) Giriappa Road, T.Nagar, Chennai, India 600017, on phone at + 91 44 24759477 or + 91 98400 34900.