The Ecosystem (read if you care)

Connecting with the earth makes us come alive with the vitality; loss of such connectivity makes us anemic physically, mentally and morally.

We, in the name of modern lives are actually disconnecting the loop in the natural ecosystem in the name of scientific innovations. The biggest sufferer in this is our mother nature and very less people are aware that it’s going to hit back - if not us, our children. A very tiny thing we do towards protecting our soil makes a huge impact.

I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Srinivasan, popularly known as Vellore Srinivasan. This man is working on waste management for over 2 decades. Most of us living in Chennai would know the vehicle with red and green colour coming to our homes to collect the waste twice a day. Very few of us know what happens to that waste once it’s taken from us.

Mostly the wastes collected from households are not segregated (bio-degradable and non bio-degradable mixed) and are filled in landfill sites. In Chennai it is Pallikaranai and there is a place like that in every city. Since they all are mixed up they don’t decay in the earth and pose a threat to the environment. Rather if they are treated well in our home right away, the waste becomes a resource. It’s not a huge task to treat waste as it seems to be. I am sharing what I know and learned over the days. This can be modified anyways for improvisation or anything wrong in the process is welcome to be notified.

The maximum of waste from our households is kitchen waste – vegetarian and non vegetarian. Treating this reduces 70% of the task. When I say “treating” it’s not a huge process. It’s very simple.

Step 1: It has to be put in an earthen pot separately instead of the regular dustbin where waste like plastic covers and other non – biodegradable waste are collected.
Step 2: Keep putting the kitchen waste into the pot. Spray some mix of cow dung with water on top of every filling. And cover it with a piece of jute material once the pot is full.
Step 3: Relax. In 45 days time, the whole thing becomes 1/3rd in size. The filled stuff gets converted to compost which is rich nutrition for the plants. That’s it. The kitchen waste is treated. This process is called composting.

The compost is a rich organic food the plants. This is only for vegetarian waste. Non – vegetarian waste has to get treated separately. However, egg shells can be treated separately. It can be dried up and smashed to powders which are rich calcium for the rose plants. Who doesn’t love a healthy and beautiful rose!!

If cow dung is not very much available, earth worms can be added or dry leaves or newspaper can be shredded and added with the waste for the compost. Further, as like how air is essential for us to breathe, similarly the waste also needs air for it to get composted. So, make few holes around the pot from the bottom (say 2 cms from the bottom and middle). The jute cloth will allow air to get in from the top. A little moisture is also very much essential as like water means to us. If buying a pot and drilling them seems to be a huge task, there are ready made compost pots available for sale at a nominal price. Visit www.dailydump.org for details.

It’s an ecosystem. What comes from the plants goes back to the plants. It’s simple. All we need to have are few plants around our home. They give us fresh air, flowers and a fresh feel to us all the time. If you don’t have plants in your homes, try to have few. Even if you don’t have the flair for plants there are people to buy the compost from you. Yeah, what you think as waste is actually a resource.

Few may think that the waste stinks, but its really not. It stinks only if the compost is too wet. And stirring the compost can overcome this issue.

One of the major non bio-degradable things which we waste is plastic bags. Way to treat them is to re-use them. Carrying existing bags to market places or using paper bags or cloth bags really helps the environment a lot. Carrying these re-usable covers in our office back pack, cars, bikes never increases the weight. I remember folks used to collect and segregate the milk covers, newspaper to sell it off. It’s re-cycled. It fetches money. It’s just a small contribution from every individual which helps the environment.

This is a very basic set up which we can be adopted in our homes in our daily lives, but this is not everything. There are different kinds of waste like human hair, nails and so on. These are well differentiated in the site http://www.zerowastemanagement.org/ and to know what can be composted in home please visit http://dailydump.org/what_can. Treating them is easy when it is segregated at source. Once the waste is segregated, it is no longer a waste, it’s a resource.

Mr. Srinivasan preaches as his religion at a community level employing physically challenged people and the below slides show you how it is done. UNICEF recognizes and supports him but still there are community level challenges faced everywhere this is tried to get implemented. Volunteers to help out are always welcome and actually are required in bunch.

For more information on Waste Management and composting please browse through http://www.zerowastemanagement.org/ and http://dailydump.org/home_composting and of course Gooooogle. Let’s do our bit now to help ourselves in future.