THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Nauseating stench and leaking leachate dirtying the house are nightmares that confront many who keep a waste management mechanism at home, a silent but known fact behind the louder demands for common public waste management mechanisms.
Pipe-composting, one of the early decentralised waste mechanisms the City Corporation tried to popularise, was frowned upon and finally destined to be a failure owing to such reasons. Still, when many wards make claims of having installed hundreds of the units, a question mark remains on whether they function properly or not.
One of the major allegations against pipe-compost was attack of rodents and worms wriggling out of it. An attempt to combat this problem was made by the City Corporation by putting holes in the pipes, converting them to aerobic units. Such a model is tried in Kowdiar, one of the places that come under the total sanitation tag in the ‘Ente Nagaram Sundara Nagaram’ campaign.
Called bucket composting, the easy-to-handle garbage mechanism has been set up in households as part of the ‘My City’ integrated solid waste management project of HLL Lifecare Limited. The significance of bucket composting is evident in areas where the water table level is high, making the practical implementation of pipe-composting units a challenge.
The bucket composting units have a net placed at the bottom of a bucket over which a coir pith is laid and biodegradable waste is deposited above. After this, the pith is again placed, which acts like an inoculum for decomposition of garbage into compost.
“Waterlogging and worms infesting the pipe-compost units pose a problem in areas with a higher water table. The advantage of bucket composting is that the pith absorbs the water content. It can be conveniently placed in kitchen or car shed,” said Ashish Nair, deputy manager (utility) of HLL Lifecare Limited.
A bag of coir pith costs Rs 120 and will last for one to one-and-a-half months. So far, as many as 600 homes in Kowdiar area have installed the bucket compost units.