KOCHI: There is a lot of money involved in coconut husk waste. Unbelievable? But it’s true.
Now when you husk coconuts don’t throw away the waste, for you can earn money by giving out the husk to the various Kudumbasree units in the city. Many households in the city are on a fix on what to do with the huge pile of coconut husk that litter their backyard. If you have coconut trees in your plot that gives you a good yield then you too might be facing a similar problem. While some dump it along with the household waste others opt to burn the pile. But with this initiative of the state government your problem will be solved. This venture was started in the late 2009 by the Ministry for Coir and Cooperation as the state was facing acute fiber shortage, said Suresh KV, senior cooperation inspector. “By collecting coconut husk from various households in the state we plan to reduce the shortage of fibre, which had affected this export-oriented industry,” he said. Under this scheme these self-help groups have been able to earn Rs 100 a day by collecting coconut husk.
The government has formed 10 consortium in different parts of the state and the project is slowly picking up in the city too. For every piece of dry husk you will be paid 10 paise.
In Kochi, the North Paravur Project Office is in charge of this programme, which covers the whole of Ernakulam district. Earlier this year the Coir Board and the Kerala Government had entered into a tie-up to renovate the 56 defibering units in the state that have been lying unused for a long time. The lack of fibre has been the main cause of these units being defunct. As a measure to sort out this problem a mobile coir fibre extraction machine has also been introduced, which is expected to help overcome the shortage of coir fibre.