solutions to Goa garbage

https://www.commonfloor.com/guide/what-is-waste-management-learn-from-apartments-in-bangalore-7274.html

Bangalore city generates almost 3,500 tons of waste daily which is collected by the garbage collection vans and is taken to the landfill sites around the city for garbage disposal. With time, the availability of landfills for dumping waste is becoming difficult. Moreover, all the landfill sites are reported to be contaminating the underground water, land and air and thus are posing a challenge for the environment.

Over 75% of the total garbage is organic and can be decomposed. Considering this, some responsible communities have made their move towards zero waste by recycling kitchen waste themselves, instead of dumping it in the bins or just giving it away to the garbage collection vans.

One such community is Sobha Bellandur that has 11 Societies with over 1700 Houses and around 7000 residents. This neighborhood in South East Bangalore has a very comprehensive waste management system. The residents are

provided with black, white and green re-usable bags to separate their waste. The white bag is for paper and other related waste. The Black bag is for Plastic and electronic waste and the Green bag is for Kitchen waste. The green bags in which the organic waste is dumped gets collected by the housekeeping members of the communities and taken to the Organic Waste Converter (OWC) unit.

The OWC unit in this society has been installed by Excel Industries Ltd. If the company’s claims are to be believed then 40% of the waste comes segregated from apartments and the rest gets segregated manually. An organization named Saahas Bangalore is dedicated to solve this problem of solid waste. A team from Saahas performs the task of segregation of waste in each block of Sobha community and takes away the plastic bottles, paper, electronic waste etc. for the recycling. This is how these apartments are producing zero waste. This clearly shows that there is a lack of awareness among residents and they need to be educated about the importance of waste segregation.

How the process works:

Once the segregation of the waste is done the compost mixing machine is fed with feeder stock of compost along with a proportion of garden and kitchen waste. After the components are well mixed the mixture is kept in crates for fermentation and a little amount of water is added to the mixture after every 3 hours. The process of fermentation takes place naturally in almost 15 days to make the compost ready to be used in gardens of these societies. At present they are processing 18,000 kilograms of organic waste and producing almost 1,500 kilograms of compost every month.

A similar initiative is taken up by a group of progressive women; residents of Shakarnagar. They are trying to establish an Organic Waste Converter unit in there blocks and are going door to door to educate the residents regarding organic waste separation and waste management.

It is blissful to visualize all the apartments and houses in Bangalore taking such initiative of composting the organic waste and creating a beautiful, garbage free and healthy Bangalore.

Making this dream come true is not very expensive. It needs a mere one time investment of Rs. 2,000 per flat, to get one odorless composting system and around Rs. 100 every month for maintaining it. With this little investment you can remove almost 1500 dump trucks from the road, save the wastage of about 25 million liters of diesel by dump trucks, prevent contamination of water, land, air and get the pleasure of enriching the land with chemical free fertilizer produced as compost.

It’s a win-win situation. If each one of us take this initiative and make a sincere effort to wipe out these environmental hazards, it will not take long for India to be a zero waste country.

Thank you for sharing the experience of the Bengalorewallahs.

Since coming to Goa a decade ago, and heeding the advice given by Klint at various fora,

we have composted our green/wet waste successfully in a large wire cage which we keep wet during the dry season to encourage the composting process. We also  place fish/shrimp waste and chicken leftovers in this compost pile  We use it as fertilizer for our plants.

Other  in-organic solid waste like tins and non-reusable glass bottles we  have collected and after a month or so, we put it in a deep pit that we have dug in a far unused  corner of our property.  We place a layer of soil ever so often, especially in the wet months to deny a habitat for mosquitoes.   At the current rate,of placing these items in the pit, it will probably last for the rest of  our lives.  Future generations will have to worry about it.  Of course we try to avoid having this problem in the first place by not buying things in glass bottles that cannot be reused or in tins.

The problem that alludes us though is plastics !  What is one supposed to do with plastic bags, wrappers and bottles and the ubiquitous tetrapak containers.  We are not supposed to burn such items because it releases noxious fumes in the environment.  We do our utmost to avoid such packaging and plastic bottles.  I have resorted to carrying an old bottle of

Johnny Walker Scotch whisky filled with home boiled and filtered water to quench my thirst.

But we still had a sizeable selection of  plastic items, until a friend alerted me to the fact that rag pickers come to his house to collect these items.  So I unloaded it on him for disposal.

I guess rag pickers take these items to a re-cycler ?  Are there places in Goa where one can tiake such items for recycling ?

I would appreciate the advice of fellow recyclers and environmentalists.  I have asked this

question on public fora before and did not get specific responses.  Judging from the trash strewn by the wayside  and dumped in water bodies, this problem exists all over Goa ?

Here’ what you could do with the non biodegradables:

1.       Old cell phones, chargers- even toy chargers and other accessories can be deposited at the Nokia recycle centre at Panaji, off 18^th June road opp. The side facade of Directorate of Education.

2.       All plastic carry bags, wrappers, etc can be given to the rag pickers or Panaji has a collection point at St Inez. This is baled and sent to the ACC factory where it is incenarated/ used as fuel with pollution norms!

3.       Tetra packs are recycled to make roofing sheets at a factory in Gujarat. Check with Clinton for details.

4.       Batteries too can be collected and deposited at many collection centres in Panaji (CCP), Vasco.

5.       Milk plastic packets can be washed and returned at any Govt Milk Booth and in lieu of 60-100 nos you’ll get a 500lt milk packet free!

6.       News papers can be given to recyclers at many collection points in the city or to fruit and vegetable vendors.

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