A Success Story

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No one likes waste lying about the house or the neighbourhood.  Yet, few people do anything pro-active about it.  It is possible to reduce the waste in every home, which means a lot less garbage to deal with on the street.  Easy and rewarding solutions are available to handle green waste from the kitchen.  Estimates say two thirds of waste generated by South Indian households is compostable green waste, which is the unwanted part of vegetables after cutting.

I do it through pot composting these days. Earlier, I practised vermicomposting in the balcony of my second floor apartment. Practical problems in maintaining a vermi-bed in a small space has forced me to shift to anaerobic composting in earthen flower pots.

The flower pots are not expensive and they are an ideal way to combine the twin goals of composting kitchen waste as well as grow plants organically. It takes about a three weeks for a one foot diameter pot with a height of 1.5 feet to get filled. The waste gets composted anaerobically and is automatically dessicated and compacted as waste is added everyday.

This is also a very feasible and desirable option for those living in apartments. Combined with their penchant for "terraced" gardening, the pots are ideally suited for the staircase landings. There are also other options such as using discarded paint buckets, plastic utensils and the like which can be used to compost the waste and then turned into pots with plants.

The simple message is that compost can be generated at home for potting and a small garden grown with the compost that comes from the waste you generate. There is also the additional benefit that you have reduced the burden of the municipal waste management system.