Composting

Growing together with plants

Hello all, I am Mahin! While living in an era of technology and continuous development, I and my friends from Janta Vasahat community decided to explore new things with our education.

We are group of 10 girls decided to work on issues of global warming, solid waste management, and unhygienic surroundings.

Initially we took a round of our surroundings and noted a few things like unsorted garbage, lack of cleanliness, lack of plants and poor waste management system. And then we decided to bring change in our surrounding.

We needed guidance and for that we visited one organic farm, “The Urban Farm” there we saw various plants, herbs, vegetables, flowers planted in very small area with the help of modern farming techniques including organic composting. We learned process and importance of organic composting and how it is helpful for solid waste management.I and my friends were amazed to know how wet garbage generated in home is useful for the composting.

“निसर्ग निर्मित प्रत्येक गोष्ट निसर्ग स्वतःत सामावून घेतो” (Nature absorbs everything created by nature) I actually relate with this saying in Marathi after visiting urban farm.

Later we all decided to develop a small garden in our community by using organic compost. We brought waste plastic jars from our neighboring places. We collected coco pit and wet waste along with pieces of bricks for composting. We used concept of best out of waste. Along with this I and my friends identified place for developing organic garden.

We were further encouraged by one of the corporate company in Pune who decided to help us through their CSR initiative. They provided organic culture and pots for composting. With this help composting took a peak. In between resource person from urban farm came to Janta Vasahat and visited proposed organic garden place and gave some suggestions.

Interactive session by Resource person from SWaCH helped us to understand more about composting and importance of 3R in our day to day life. (3R’s are – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle).

Process of doing composting is going on, it will take 3 to 4 months for converting garbage into soil. Meanwhile we will be planting trees near the area where we study every day.

During the process of composting we experienced joy, hard work, and overcoming on our difficulties.

Here I would like to share some experiences of my friends in their words,

Priyanka said, “I enjoyed roaming here and there for collecting waste;I interacted with people convincing them for giving wet and dry garbage to me.Some people listen to me and helped me but some people just keep shouting at me.

Pratiksha said, “My mother was very angry because pot was stinking after filling wet waste into that, but I convinced her by telling process and importance of composting and how it is beneficial for us then she allowed me for keeping pot in the house.”

Shahista said, “I always like to keep myself busy and engaged, I also like flowers and plants very much. So I really enjoyed this activity”

Jyoti said, “Initially it was very hard to tolerate odor of culture and wet waste, but now we can see results of our efforts. Every day the wet garbage is going down and it is slowly converting in to compost.”

After 3-4 months these efforts will help to grow trees and we are also growing with the process.