WHY VERY FEW PEOPLE WANT TO DO HOME COMPOSTING ?

Despite showing the most effective way of getting rid of the organic kitchen waste by the method of home composting in a bin, my experience is that there are actually very few people who really want to come forward and make commitment for the Mother Earth. People are fond of talking, debating and discussing about the issue of solid waste in workshops, seminars and conferences. The debate on source segregation is never ending without coming to the conclusion that its the maid servant which takes care of the organic kitchen waste in typical high and middle income households. The champions in such forums themselves are not coming forward to take up the most Earth Friendly Green Hobby of Home Composting ! Its a question of attitude - people perceive solid waste should be handled by some one else, its not for him or her. Some one else will come and operate his/her bin and then hand over the processed and packaged compost at the end of the month. A typical mindset also explores the business model behind this - evidently there can't be any, as seen in several progressive municipalities in the west who hand out the bins for free to their citizens !!

Secondly and funnily people also want to assess the financial benefit that could be possible out of their investment in a simple composting bin. The typical response is "How much will be the value of compost that will be produced in my bin?" and "What is the return period?" My humble request is to ask yourself whether do you get the same question while planting a tree ? or going to a temple od doing some other noble act? Then why do we ask these questions when the act is going to releave the burden from the Earth, make it a better place and in the process convert the putrefying material into a desirable end product - manure/compost.

Let's hope there will be enough concern on the issue of mounting solid waste and people will come forward to discharge their individual environmental responsibility in a foreasble period. Am I being too optimistic !

Asit Nema

November 15, 2009

WHEN WILL WE DRAW LESSONS FOR EFFECTIVE MSW MANAGEMENT ?

The domain of municipal solid waste management is characterized by a very high degree of disorder – starting from the point of generation to collection, transport, treatment and disposal. We should not expect a private operator to come with the ‘Midas Touch’ – he is only rendering an essential service which our ULBs are finding difficult to deliver and in the process perhaps saving us from the biological warfare that we are inflicting on ourselves across the length and breath of the country.

Solid waste management involves 3M –material, men and machines. It is akin to an industrial logistics operation wherein unfortunately value addition to the feedstock in financially viable terms is not possible; instead the objective is to efficiently remove (by deploying men and machines) an offensive, putrefying and invariably pathogenic material away from habitations, dispose it off safely and thereby safeguard public health. In this context, the prime objective of treatment is not to convert ‘waste into wealth’ but to reduce its offensive and pathogenic characteristics, reduce its volume and thereby minimize its (ecological) foot-print for safe disposal in a sanitary landfill. Unfortunately when it comes to treatment, our national policy is heavily influenced by ‘holistic’ and ‘idealistic’ principles of ‘resource recovery’ and we are being made to believe (by some pied pipers) that some day a combination of technology and a private operator will be available which will provide the ‘Midas Touch’ and convert our garbage into gold. We must not harbor the illusion that just because a treatment plant looks like a factory, it would or should also have the profitability of an industrial enterprise. It is high time that we draw lessons from the cumulative experience of several failed MSW treatment plants which were constructed during last 3 decades across the country (A. Compost: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Vijayawada, Thane, Bhopal, Gwalior, Shimla, Shillong, Mysore, Trivendrum, ..….; B. Biomethanation: Lucknow, Chennai, Vijayawada ; C. Mass-burn: Timarpur @ Delhi ; D. RDF: Baroda, Devnar @ Mumbai, Vijayawada, etc…and every plant had its own story and a distinct villain – for Vijayawada, please see my previous post on this blog) that they can not generate positive revenues (either under ULB or private operator control) by selling either compost or refuse derived fuel or electricity. There are large number of risk factors involved at every stage of the supply chain and processing operation which can be summarized by the Murphy’s Law which states that – if any thing that can go wrong will go wrong… any time. In terms of one of the fundamental laws of science the situation is characterized by the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics which states that - for a high disorder (entropy) system, the energy input required to bring desired level of order is commensurately high and therefore the input cost will be much higher than the value of the processed outputs. It is in recognition of these tenets that world over all the MSW treatment plant operators are given ‘gate fee’ in proportion to the ‘accepts’ (all mixed waste received at the plant) which typically varies from USD 60-200/Metric Tonne. Even in China which has gone ahead in a major way in construction of mass-burn facilities, the gate fee is as high as USD 40/Metric Tonne. Gate fee is the main revenue stream in the overall business model of MSW treatment plants and not the proceeds from sale of compost or electricity. Unfortunately in India the treatment plant operators are not being offered such financial support and instead only a ‘tipping fee’ corresponding to the ‘rejects’ (typically arbitrarily fixed at 20-30% of ‘accepts’ @ USD 5-15/Metric Tonne) is offered only to the landfill operators. It is argued that ULBs can not afford ‘gate fee’ at all. In that case it must be recognized that ULBs then do not qualify for creating an asset which in all likelihood is going to become a ‘non-performing asset’ very soon. In spite of lot of experience of the failed plants, unfortunately we do not seem to find the necessary corrections being incorporated in the policy.

In the entire chain of operations, and from the point of view of a private service provider it’s only the transport component which has the potential to generate positive revenue. This component gets paid according to the tonnage and haulage distance which are easy to measure. The flip side is that the transporter is not interested in segregation and would rather mix construction debris, drain silt, road sweeps as well. It is not surprising that there are more private players bidding for that segment than the treatment and disposal end. In several smaller ULBs one finds even municipal councilors vying for these lucrative contracts under pseudonyms.

Let us also not be under the illusion that NGOs can deliver services for collection, treatment and carry out awareness without charging appropriate fees. In order to sustain their operations, offer incrementally higher level of service and ensure occupation health and safety of their workers, they need to carry out their operations as efficient private operators – involving technical expertise, equipment, manpower, operating capital, safeguards, etc. In return for their services, the municipality and the polluters at large must be prepared to pay appropriate fees. It is not surprising to find several well intentioned initiatives getting into difficulties for a variety of reasons.

Lastly, it must be recognized that segregation at source is a utopian preposition especially in a society which is characterized by high degree of ‘disorder’. It has been 9 years since the MSW Rules were brought into force and we do not have any municipality out of 5000 odd across the country which can claim to have achieved success on this front, notwithstanding short-lived isolated instances. In the higher and the middle income group households, while the family members are least concerned, it’s the maid servant who generates and handles the waste – wet, dry, green, brown, etc... The maid servant has several handicaps – lack of education, awareness and concern and she is quite mobile – here today gone tomorrow. On this front it would be surprising to find more than 1% within the sector community itself who preach source segregation and are practicing this at their homes ! Then what to talk of the low income section of the society and the millions living in unauthorized colonies and squatter slums – its not on their radar at all.

Conclusion: Under the excuse of paucity of land for sanitary landfill we are observing cancerous growth of open dumps across the urban landscape of India and creating biological minefields for the society at large. Our rules and policies need to be brought in synch with the reality and our efforts and resources need to be deployed more objectively in proven solutions such as sanitary landfills.

Asit Nema

WHEN WILL WE DRAW THE HARD LESSONS ON MSW MANAGEMENT ?

Experiements of Vijayawada in MSW treatment

Vijayawada, a medium size town in Andhra Pradesh in South India has come full circle. About 10 years back it started with a large scale compost plant of 300 MT/day, then about 5 years down the line it set up an RDF plant of 500 MT/day for power generation (WTE), and subsequently with GEF funding it set up a small biogas plant of 20 MT/day. As of March 2009, the status is that the compost plant operator has closed the shop due to poor sales, low realisation and mounting losses. The RDF plant is operating only at 20% of the rated capacity, the operator is incurring major losses, and the biogas plant has come to a stand still. While the biogas plant is pretty well designed and it has been producing fairly regular quantity of gas, this time the problem has occured in the gas engine section. A critical engine part is not available in the local market and neither the overseas supplier is in a position to provide a replacement. As a result the cumulative investments in mixed municipal solid waste treatment to the extent of about Rs. 550 million have come to be classified as 'non-performing assets' and the urban local body is back to the old practice of disposal in 'low lying areas' - which is simply put 'open dumping' of waste as well as open burning of waste (see the pictures). Unfortunately the overall scheme did not consider provision of a sanitary landfill site as the foundation for an effective and sustainable treatment and disposal model. There are major lessons to be learnt from this experience. First lesson is that MSW treatment plants can not pay for themselves - they need to be adequately supported by urban local bodies with appropriate fiscale and financial incentives if they are to be operated by a private service provider sustainably. Second, they are strongly under the influence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics as well as under the Murphy's Law. As per the former - its the entropy that rules the world of municipal solid waste management and as per the latter - if any thing that can go wrong will go wrong any time, not just at the worst possible moment !

Home Composting - An Individual Environmental Responsibility

As urban India is witnessing unprecedented growth, our cities are also confronted with increasing quantities of municipal solid waste across the country. Heaps and mountains of garbage characterise the landscape of urban India. Delhi, the capital city itself is generating around 7000-8000 metric tonnes of mixed municipal solid waste every day and it is estimated that daily waste generation across the country is of the order of 120,000 metric tonnes. This is expected to double by 2015 and quadruple by 2025. Unfortunately the municipalities of large and small cities alike are unable to handle this mounting crisis as they do not have adequate resources to collect, transport, treat and safely dispose of the waste. As a result of systemic limitations, a large part of the waste is not collected and it is found accumulating within residential areas. The other part which is collected and transported is disposed of in open dumps on the outskirts of the towns, along highways, near river banks, etc. Among others, because land is scarce and expensive, municipalities have not been able to construct sanitary landfill sites, and as a result they resort to unscientific methods of disposal. Open disposal of waste is unsafe because it creates breeding grounds for pathogenic bacteria, viruses and other disease vectors which adversely affect public heath. Diseases that can be spread because of poor solid waste management include dysentery, viral and bacterial diarrhoea, gastro-enteritis, typhoid, trachoma, plague, typhus, salmonella, leptospirosis, filariasis, malaria, tapeworm, etc. Open dumps also cause river and groundwater pollution and release odour which lead to severe environmental and psychosomatic health impacts on the surrounding communities. Decaying waste in dumps and more so in the landfills also releases methane - a powerful green house gas, which contributes to global warming. Last but not the least, because open dumps attract scavenging birds, they are a major threat to air traffic as many a times accidents take place when birds hit aircrafts near the airports.

In order to address this growing public health and safety concern, the Foundation for Greentech Environmental Systems has developed an alternate approach which involves motivating urban residents to start exercising their ‘Individual Environmental Responsibility’ by adopting the ‘Earth Friendly Green Hobby’ of ‘Home Composting’ and thereby evolve as concerned ‘Earth Citizens’.

In this approach, the biodegradable kitchen waste (whatever a cow can eat!) from a house is put in the Green Earth Machine (GEMÔ) – an improvised bin of 100-150 litre with plenty of holes for composting which has been developed by the Foundation. A GEMÔ is designed for Indian conditions such that it can absorb 1-2 kg/day of vegetable waste from a typical family on a continuous basis, all round the year. The GEMÔ works on completely natural forces - it requires no energy, chemicals, earthworms or bacterial solutions; it works under aerobic conditions and transforms the waste into a good quality compost.

The art and science of ‘Home Composting’ requires maintaining a balance between vegetable kitchen waste, dry leaves (or waste paper, cartons boxes, etc.), moisture and mixing the contents once a fortnight with a rod or a garden rake. From time to time one can sprinkle garden soil, compost, ash or neem khali (de-oiled cake of neem seeds). First compost will come out in about 3 months and then every month one can take out small quantities. Users can integrate this practice with or cultivate the hobby of gardening and derive joy from doing good for the environment.

For the motivated individuals, this practice represents sacrificial offering to the Mother Earth which one can perform by chanting the mantra “Peace be in the universe, peace be on the Earth, peace be in the water, peace be in the herbs and vegetation and peace be everywhere…” which is normally done on completion of a Hawan. For a municipality, this represents an ultimate form of community participation and decentralised solid waste management which offers reduction in cost of collection, transport, treatment and disposal.

To promote this practice and help clean up our cities, the Foundation for Greentech Environmental Systems has launched a War on Waste, set up a Compost Help Line 011 2697 4941 in Delhi and a created a website http://www.green-ensys.org/. Over last 2 years it has enabled about 500 families in Delhi area to adopt this practice which enables returning kitchen waste in a humble manner back to the Earth. In this regard, the Foundation aims to create India Home Compost Network with committed NGOs and municipalities such that more cities and towns can adopt this approach and improve sanitation levels and safeguard public health respectively.

THE LAW OF DISORDER – NEMESIS FOR MIXED MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE TREATMENT PLANTS

1. The root cause of failure of the entire range of technology options for treatment of mixed municipal solid waste is the fundamental law called the ‘Second Law of Thermodynamics’ which in simple words is called ‘The Law of Disorder’. The law says that ‘higher the disorder, the higher the need for external energy/resource input to get some thing useful out of any initiative’. If the cost of input is higher than the price or premium on the output, it is not worthwhile as an industrial venture.

2. Unlike any other industrial feedstock (e.g., iron ore, coal, etc.) the mixed municipal solid waste is characterised by a high degree of disorder – called ‘entropy’. For instance it has high moisture content, plastics, rags, soil, sand and stones, metal fines, and at times hazardous substances. Such variable and aggressive composition demands very advanced and robust equipment for pre-processing. Secondly the ‘degree of disorder’ is also not fixed – it keeps varies from batch to batch, day to day and season to season. For instance in summer there will be high silt/grit content while in Monsoon there will be high moisture levels. Therefore the pre-processing plant can not deliver a reliable and consistent output which could be guaranteed to be one hundred percent suitable round the year for feeding into a downstream ‘waste-to-energy’ plant or a ‘compost’ plant or an ‘RDF’ plant. Moreover, because of this ‘high disorder’, the equipment itself is subjected to high degree of corrosion, abrasion and therefore high wear and tear entailing frequent and costly repairs and replacements. Thus unlike an ore processing industrial plant, here the ‘feedstock’ is highly unreliable.

3. The society which generates the waste or let’s says the ‘feedstock’ for our processing plants is also characterised by a ‘high degree of disorder’. A large percentage of the population is either uneducated, unaware or unconcerned about segregation of waste. The waste is neither stored at home nor is it properly packed and disposed off in plastic bags. Efforts to bring about community awareness have not been able to bring about the desired response and the producers (householders) are not even prepared to pay a small price to the door collection service providers who helps in reducing the ‘disorder’. Further, open disposal at waste storage depots/ community collection point (or ‘Dalao’ as it is called in India) invites cattle to increase the disorder further and the monsoon adds an extra dose of moisture. Many towns are not able to control mixing of construction debris, drain silt, domestic hazardous waste, hospital waste, etc. at the Dalao’ . Thus the ‘disorder of feedstock’ starts from its place of generation/collection and continues all the way up to the dump yard and the processing plant.

4. On top of all this, we try to convince ourselves that this ‘highly disordered’ feedstock can be processed by a ‘low cost appropriate technology’. As a matter of fact, on the contrary the conventional wisdom says that it would require a much higher degree of robustness of the processing technology from the points of view equipment specifications, energy input, process control and environmental impact. Unfortunately the widely proclaimed ‘windrow’ technology for composting scores very low on all the four criterion.

5. In the backdrop of this ‘disorderliness’, it is not surprising to find a large number of failed initiatives for converting ‘waste-to-energy’ or ‘waste-to-wealth’ across the country. As a matter of fact, it needs to be emphasised and must be realised sooner than later that these initiatives are taking us nowhere but leading to ‘Waste-of-Energy’ and ‘Waste-of-Wealth’. Without harbouring any expectations of making gainful recovery (in financially viable terms as in an industrial enterprise) from the Indian mixed MSW (from where the rag pickers and the cows have taken out the last vestige of recoverables), it must be recognised that it is fit for only giving a ‘dignified burial’, i.e., safe disposal in a sanitary landfill, so as to protect environment and public health. Otherwise we will continue to experience not just the usual dysentery, viral and bacterial diarrhoea, typhoid and conjunctivitis, but more deadly versions of epidemics, e.g., gastro-enteritis, trachoma, laptospirosys, plague, typhus, salmonella, filariasis, malaria, tapeworm and trichonosis.

Asit Nema M.Tech. (Env. Engg., IIT Kanpur), M.Sc. (Sanitary Engg., Netherlands)
Director
Foundation for Greentech Environmental Systems
K-12, Sarita Vihar
New Delhi 110 076
Ph 011 4105 4084 / 2697 4941

THE CHALLENGES OF VERMICOMPOSTING

Fundamentally ‘vermicomposting’ represents one of the most ‘Earth Friendly’ ‘Ecological Sanitation’ solutions and no wonder many agencies and individuals are enamoured with the docile earthworms with regard to their capacity to convert kitchen waste (as against mixed municipal solid waste) into useful compost. There is no doubt about the capability of earthworms to devour the food left-over and other vegetable waste and in the process deliver a very homogeneous, uniform, pleasant textured and sweet smelling compost. However, in order to deliver such a high quality product, the earthworms need a great deal of care and protection. A number of well intentioned initiatives at the level of individuals, communities and even municipalities have been discontinued due to a number of external risk factors. A set of concerns, problems and risk factors are described hereunder:

1. Earthworms are very sensitive to temperature variations and require humid and shady place to work effectively. Temperature within the vermibeds/waste piles needs to be maintained within the ideal range of 20-28°C otherwise the earthworms start dieing. Typically in peak summer and winter seasons a higher rate of die-off is observed if the vermibeds are not well covered and protected. Secondly, aerobic composting being an exothermic process where the temperature in the core of a high waste pile rises beyond 55°C, it does not offer a very conducive environment for earthworms to survive. It is essentially to avoid heat build up that it is recommended to use (a) pre- or semi-digested organic waste, (b) restrict the height of vermibeds as low as 30-45 cm, (c) provide a shed of thatch and (d) cover the vermibeds with moist gunny bags to keep the army of earthworms cool.
2. The requirement of feeding pre-digested food waste entails provision of a pre-processing section with 15-30 days holding capacity. Secondly restriction on height of vermibeds (as against large windrows) translates into large area requirement for a community level treatment facility. Easy availability of land is a limitation and therefore either the throughput is restricted or the vermibeds get overloaded. A combination of overload and raw waste as feedstock results in higher die-off of earthworms.
3. Earthworms are also not comfortable under high moisture conditions. In monsoon an uncovered facility experiences higher die-off.
4. Earthworms are easy targets of predators and therefore vermibeds need to be well ‘guarded’ against centipedes, snakes, rodents, birds, hens and red ants. Generally to avoid ants, every vermibed has a ‘moat’ of water all around !!
5. It has been found that the indigenous species and soil burrower category of earthworms are not effective for direct devouring of kitchen waste. Exotic species such as Eudrillus euginiae, Eisenia foetida and Perionyx excavatus which are found to be most suitable are required to be cultured or purchased. The market rate of exotic species varies between Rs. 300 – 1000/kg of earthworms. Given the risk of predation and sensitivity to climatic factors, no wonder some agree-entrepreneurs are more interested in selling the earthworms rather than setting up a vermicomposting operation !

Once an individual or a large facility operator experiences colony die-off, he/she does not get second time motivated to procure a new batch of earthworms at the prevailing market rates and recolonise the vermibeds. There are so many uncertainties involved. And to ward them off, a good deal of care is required. Because of these reasons, it is generally found that sooner or later most of the vermicomposting initiatives are abandoned.

Further, because of the inherent uncertainties, the vermicomposting systems are not suitable for scaling up to treat large quantities of mixed MSW at ward or city level. It is understandable that these very reasons contributed to abandoning of a plant which was ambitiously designed for 400 MT/day capacity at the Devnar landfill site in 1992-93 in Mumbai.

In conclusion, municipalities should not expect a vermicomposting plant to be their end solution. Even the motivated individuals must recognise the limitations of our friendly and docile earthworms. At individual or community level one should ideally go for simple aerobic composting, letting the freindly aerobic bacteria and fungi to do the good job !!