Endlessly Green is pleased to share these two case studies of SWM projects being executed by Mumbai-based Green Communities Foundation which is a waste management consultancy for societies and corporates. This blogpost lays bare how certain simple processes can help you execute segregation and composting in communities no matter which part of the country you live in.

1. Kalpataru Estate, Building 5&6 (Jogeshwari E)

Santosh Munot, Chairperson of Kalpataru Estate Building 5&6, spearheaded waste management in her society. The society has an enthusiastic and efficient team of 25 volunteers that has imparted knowledge about segregation at home. The volunteers have monitored segregation thoroughly to achieve high compliance rates in record time.

GCF began by bringing Santosh on board. Subsequently, a training session was organised for residents, children and domestic helps. GCF also conducted fun activities and a quiz for children. It was a task to assemble domestic helps under one roof. The refreshments offered by the society was a necessary incentive. Their session included a thorough explanation of the segregation chart. The housekeeping was trained regarding collection, weighing of waste, composting and harvesting.

GCF provides bi-weekly monitoring for segregation and composting. We have also recommended the design and capacity for compost cages. In addition, we also connect the society to required vendors for equipment and consumables.

Composting process followed

They are composting their wet waste using EM solution. Dry waste goes to a local recycler and reject waste to BMC. Their society has a shredder, a weighing scale and six compost cages.

This society composts about 190 kgs every day using EM solution. About 76 kg of dry material including equal parts of old compost and cocopeat (plain, non-microbial) are added as layers in the cage.

2. Raheja Classique Building 5 (Andheri W)

Number of flats: 96
Composting Equipment: 5 cages and 1 shredder and 1 industrial weighing scale
Composting since: 20th July 2017
Dry waste recycled: 3,323 kgs
Wet Waste prevented from going to the landfill: 8484 kgs. (1900 kgs. monthly)

Mittal from RC Building 5 was the first to start a conversation on SWM and he was soon joined by Sharmila G and Nikul Shah. These three members of the management committee played an integral role in the waste management project.

The trio summoned a volunteer group of about 18 society members that came together to disseminate three-way segregation. A segregation chart and a kit comprising three bins—green, red and blue for wet waste, reject waste and dry waste, respectively—were distributed to the volunteers. A pilot for segregation was undertaken by them. Simultaneously, the housekeeping staff was instructed to collect segregated waste from these households without mixing it.

Once the volunteers were confident of segregation, they conducted door-to-door campaigns and handed over a segregation kit to each household in their building. Segregation did not come easy and volunteers had to repeatedly educate, inform non-compliant households. Moreover, the management committee issued caveats to households that did not comply with segregation norms.

Segregated waste was collected by the housekeeping staff and composting began on July, 20, 2017.

For secondary segregation of dry waste, the volunteers made use of some space in the parking lot. Here, the housekeeping staff segregated the dry waste into tetrapak, glass bottles, tin/metal, PET bottles and other hard plastic, cardboard and paper. The dry waste gets aggregated and picked up by a recycler on a fortnightly basis.

A separate section within the building is created to store electronic waste. Their society had about 600 tubelights among other e-waste.

As of now, the society has managed to reach a goal of reducing their landfill burden by 75%. Their next goal is to achieve 85%. Only the reject waste is sent out for landfilling.

Composting process followed

On an average, the community generates 70 kgs of wet waste every day. About 28 kgs of old compost and cocopeat (plain, non-microbial) is used as bulking material. Wet waste is weighed and shredded daily before it is put into the composting cage.

Text and pics courtesy: GCF.
For other information, visit website: http://greencf.org/