Pic: Hariram P S
It’s hard to come across an organic gardener who has not heard of Jeevamrut. The ingredients needed for this are easy to source and it’s easy to prepare, too. The following recipe is being republished verbatim from Soil Recipes authored by Goa-based organic farmer Isa Alvares and published by The Organic Farming Association of India. Continue reading
Five Barrel Digesters being installed at Mars Meadows, Rajarajeshwari Nagar. This apartment has 55 homes.
We have quite a few individual home composting and also several large-scale composting solutions available in the market. But large bulk generators with 50 homes or above grabbed the focus of most of the emerging eco-innovators thus far, leaving the small apartment segment with 10-15 homes, or fewer, crying for attention.
In general, large complexes have many advantages stacked in their favour—mainly financial leeway to an extent and space set aside for processing waste. If not, they can carve out a corner on the terrace or basement to get going. I have seen this happening in several communities. Continue reading
War, pestilence, even climate change, are trifles by comparison.
Destroy the soil and we all starve. – George Monbiot.
This is the International Year of Soils. What better way to help the soil heal than going organic and shunning chemical fertilisers and pesticides?
Soil Recipes is a useful how-to-do-it manual of soil nutrition and maintenance authored by Goa-based organic farmer ISA ALVARES and published by The Organic Farming Association of India (OFAI). Endlessly Green is happy to republish these recipes.
The recipes, as the author says, have been “vetted and verified by experienced organic farmers” belonging to OFAI. They not only “enable the soil to re-stock its populations of beneficial soil microbes”, but also help “control disease…” Continue reading
Thindlu Main Road in north Bangalore. This is the state of affairs almost always.
We all thought “out of sight” meant “out of mind”, right? We were dead wrong! Here’s why.
Here’s this beautiful Thindlu Main Road in north Bangalore with a humungous GKVK campus on the one side and Vidyaranyapura with well-built houses on the other. Continue reading
Most of us know where our used sanitary pads land up. But did we know how many of them reach the landfills each day?
“Sanitary Waste, The Whole Picture” is a study conducted in 2014, probably a first-of-its-kind in India, that puts a number on one of the feminine hygiene products (FHPs) used widely in India—sanitary pads. Continue reading
D K Ravi (Pic: Indian Express)
We do not yet know the truth behind the demise one of the finest IAS officers, D K Ravi. But what we do know is his stellar performance that earned him the wrath of his detractors and the love of the people he worked for.
Kolar city, where he served as deputy commissioner between August 2013 and October 2014, underwent a never-seen-before change. Although his contribution to revenue, land and water departments seems to have been well-recognised, his almost fool-proof solid waste management model he implemented for Kolar is yet to get the recognition it truly deserves, especially by the Bangalore civic authorities who have been struggling to put two-plus-two together. Continue reading
Organic gardener Hariram Pagadala Sreenath with enthusiastic participants at a workshop organised by ‘We Care for Malleswaram’ on last Sunday. (Pic: SH)
Not all gardeners have the ability to grow with the seeds they sow. Bengaluru-based Hariram Pagadala Sreenath is one of those rarest few. Continue reading
Source: Pinterest
“Ten years ago, I wanted to send a satellite into space to take continuous photos of Earth. One of my political competitors said it wasn’t worth it. That it would be like watching grass grow. So I asked my staff to find out how much Americans spend on their lawns. It was 35 billion dollars. So I told him that Americans like watching the grass grow!” Continue reading
Ganesha festival and its after-effects at Sankey Tank in Bengaluru. (Pic source: The Hindu)
When Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan was kicked off on October 2 last, one of my Facebook friends reacted to this post and said, “Let’s first learn to put all the waste into one bin and then think of segregating it.” Continue reading
Climate warrior and former Vice President of the United States Al Gore at the Climate Reality Leadership Training Programme held in Delhi recently.
What is it about a mind that gets stretched by an idea or a heart that gets filled with hope? One of the answers can perhaps be this: The mind and the heart will never be the same again.
Please read on to know why I said what I just said. Continue reading
Marigol solar composters designed by Prudent Eco Systems, Bengaluru.
With 300 sun-blessed days in a year, any solar solution makes absolute sense in India, doesn’t it? When it comes to community composting, how about a composter that relies only on sunlight to get things going?
Marigold solar composter is a brainchild of Bengaluru-based Ravindra Karnad, IIT-Kanpur, Prudent Eco Systems Private Limited. Continue reading
An image of the Hindustan Times article on Delhi’s garbage crisis published a few months ago.
From the current 9,200 tonnes or 2,300 truckloads, in less than a decade, the capital city of India will have to grapple with 19,100 tonnes or 4,775 truckloads of garbage. According to a parliamentary panel report highlighted by Hindustan Times, Delhiites living on the fringes are refusing to give away their living space to open new landfills. Four landfills have already become stinking heaps. This toxic legacy notwithstanding, the officials’ hope for fixing new landfill sites seems never-ending.
Sounds more like the tale our own beloved Bengaluru? Continue reading
Just Google “fully automatic composting machines”, a number of companies making out-of-the-world claims pop up instantly. Among them, “composting in 24 hours” is the most common.
I have been approached by a few vendors in Bengaluru to write about their products as a community composting method. When I met them, each vendor made different claims although all of them ran on similar technology. Continue reading
Photo credit: EcoWatch.
This couldn’t have gotten better for those who have been trying to decentralise waste management in Bengaluru and championing composting as the best way to recycle wet waste in the city faced with unprecedented landfill crisis. At least now they can draw support from the US—so far known for its highest per capita garbage generation—for its fantastic composting mandates in many cities and push their cause forward saying, “Yes, we can!” Continue reading
There is loads of joy in un-complicating every day issues. Unfortunately, we are good at diverting all our finest human qualities and energies in the opposite direction. One such issue at hand in Bengaluru is composting precious wet waste. I wanted to find my own answers and after almost 2.5 years, my experiments have helped me achieve at least this much of simplicity. I hope it gets better.
If you have already read the previous post on this experiment, let me take you straight to the harvesting episode. Continue reading
Among almost all urban farmers, interest in composting seems to be a frequent corollary of their passionate love for organic gardening, or vice versa. Bengaluru, despite being the epicentre of garbage crisis, can be distinctly conscious of this silver lining and take obvious pride in it.
That said, in our pursuit to transform food and garden waste into small black particles, have we let the art of composting sidestep the science of composting? Is this a silly, juvenile romance with composting conveniently aided by the earthy aroma of moist humus? Worst of all, are we deluding ourselves into thinking that whatever we touch becomes “Black Gold”? Continue reading
Anything to do with composting case studies is incomplete until we hear from a certain someone. ‘Endlessly Green’ is happy to team up with this particular composting expert and thanks her and her ‘We Care for Malleswaram’ team-mate Shyamala Suresh for bringing you HOME COMPOSTING METHODS.
Continue reading
These last two years I have spent experimenting with various community composting methods for our apartment and once a system fell in place, it got boring. Nothing more to work on, no more failures and no more small, sweet triumphs.
I thought of composting for my own garden without depending on the community compost sold at a price. We use Up’Grade (Reap Benefit) method for this which is a cocopeat-based inoculant sold at Rs 9 per kg. I bought 3 kgs of Up’Grade from the facility office and got going. Continue reading
Vasanthi Hariprakash
The ever-bubbly and chatty media personality Vasanthi Hariprakash doesn’t think twice before chanting, “Let’s segregate, please!” Continue reading
Kolar CMC AE Kotreshappa Benni at one of the composting yards in Kolar.
If you have read the previous posts, I guess you will agree with me on this point: Frugality doesn’t necessarily mean lack of efficiency. Conversely, systemic efficiency doesn’t always come with huge spending or foreign technology. Most often, our hunt for solutions leads to divorcing ourselves from the local context and blindly adopting foreign methodologies which often fail to fit into our backyard.
If Kolar has succeeded in becoming a self-sustaining city, that’s mainly because it has evolved contextually by effectively utilising its human workforce and certain quintessentially local and time-tested techniques.
Here’s an account of how the district administration deals with each stream of segregated waste. Continue reading
Dr B Jayashree with two bins and one bag.
Being a versatile personality that lends dignity to any role she plays, any song she hums and any movie she acts in, Dr B Jayashree has been donning the role of an eco-campaigner to save Bengaluru from going to the brink. And that, as one can imagine, she does with aplomb. Continue reading
There are few studies more fascinating, and at the same time more neglected, than those of the teeming populations that exist in the dark realms of the soil. We know too little of the threads that bind the soil organisms to each other and to their world, and to the world above.
– Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962.
More than half a century after she wrote this, scientists from all over the world humbly admit that nearly 70-80 per cent of the micro-organisms in the soil have not yet been even identified. It is simply beyond human comprehension to fathom the mysterious realms and marvellous abundance that exists in the soil—“the living skin of the earth”. Because what we know is infinitely insignificant as against what exists right beneath our feet. Just 30-40 inches, to be precise. Continue reading
On this World Soil Day, it’s time to revisit Walt Whitman’s beautiful poem on compost. Let’s compost and send it back to the soil.
THIS COMPOST
SOMETHING startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me. Continue reading
Tallboy composting in progress at Esteem Classic, Rajajinagar.
If space is a major constraint in your community and all that you are left with is your basement or very little space out in the open, Tallboy from Rite-ways Enviro Private Limited, Bengaluru, can get you going instantly.
While I rate its vertical space utilisation the best of its features, speed of the process and simplicity of the method involving low labour are added advantages. What more, it gives you that lovely compost—utterly black and earthy! Continue reading
Rahul Dravid
Throughout his career, the former cricket captain of India was known as “The Wall” because of his ability to weather the bowlers’ onslaught by launching a marathon that would finally wear his opponents down. Continue reading
“Plastic is the main culprit. It has been destroying our environment. I have written a letter to the Chief Minister to ban the usage of plastic bags,” said Mayor Shanthakumari. Continue reading
After reading the previous post on Kolar, so many people want to know the WHATs and HOWs that went into transforming it into a truly and holistically clean city by its City Municipal Council authorities. Continue reading
It all began here at the district administration office.
It’s hard to think of fitting opening lines for this story without littering them with adjectives. I am taking refuge in this hair-raising conversation from Interstellar to tell a tale of a tiny little spot on our own beloved Planet Earth.
Prof. Brand: There are so many reasons why our communications might not be getting through.
Murph: I know Professor. I’m not sure, what I’m more afraid of. Them never coming back or… coming back to find we’ve failed.
Prof. Brand: Then let’s succeed. So, back to the fourth iteration. Let’s run it through some new fields.
Murph: With respect Professor, we’ve tried that hundreds of times.
Prof. Brand: It only has to work once, Murph. Continue reading
Papamma from D Kurubarahalli, Kolar.
No words can describe how evolved Papamma’s communion with nature is. A futuristic thinker who battled threat to food security and has been a guiding light for hundreds of her villagers.
Far from being browbeaten by poverty, illiteracy and caste bias, this Dalit woman living in D Kurubarahalli in Mulbagal taluk of Kolar district has spawned a green revolution by changing the mindsets of many of her villagers who were reluctant to dig the earth and sow a seed. Continue reading
If you do not want to dig into your community’s corpus funds to set up a costly infrastructure for composting wet waste, but have ample space in your apartment or gated community or resort, Up’Grade from Reap Benefit is just the solution for you. Continue reading
ENDLESSLY GREEN 