Composting - The Beginning Of A Beautiful Story
Composting marks only the beginning of a beautiful story that is about to unfold in your home. In your community. In your school. Or just anywhere. And once it does, it goes on endlessly. Let’s see how…
The Misconceptions About Composting
But let’s first look at what prevents some people from taking to composting. It’s usually the general misconceptions that composting is a stinky affair, it invites flies and maggots, etc. Some think it’s costly and not worth the effort. Unfortunately, all of these grouses can come true if composting is not done properly without understanding the fundamentals and if you fail to choose the right product. This has been a persisting misconception. Read THIS article to know more.
Choose The Right Infrastructure
Spending a few hours on understanding what composting is and the importance of good infrastructure helps you understand the fundamentals. Without which, it is very difficult to make a well-informed decision. Your ignorance may cost your community as it is public money. So read up on the internet, talk to those who are already doing community composting and visit those places to see how it is being done. For regular updates, visit HERE.
Holistic. Sustainable. Aesthetic.
Not just Eartha, all the composters and other products designed, manufactured and marketed by Endlessly Green are a mark of process-drive approach and execution. A lot of thought goes into finalising every feature of each product keeping in mind the end user-friendliness of the product, its durability, cost and aesthetics as well. Click HERE to know more.
The Ultimate Reward
No matter how it all began, how much support you got from your community and the pains you went through while executing the whole concept, the joy of holding well-processed and nice-smelling compost erases all those pain points and lets you revel in the moment this ultimate reward fetches you. With this, you will know you have made a valuable contribution by respecting Mother Nature’s algorithm. That’s what we meant when we said “Composting is just the beginning of a beautiful story”.
Once You Take To Composting...
Once a community takes to composting, then it takes very little time to realise that sustainable composting is better than landfilling the precious waste through a greedy contractor. Further, nothing can stop it from turning the entire community garden into an organic haven by shunning all hazardous chemical fertilisers and pesticides and offering a safe space for bees and birds to nest and live on. Click HERE for more.
Home and Community Gardening
For a gardener, there is no greater joy than growing and harvesting fresh vegetables from his/her own garden and using the same for dishing out something delicious! Gardening is one of those few activities that lets you connect with Nature instantly and try to decode Her marvelous mysteries as much as possible. This becomes possible only when a gardener learns how to cultivate the soil. For this to happen, compost is the most basic and important ingredient, be at home or community level. Follow this link to know about a soil recipe.
As explained above, what can happen in a home garden can also happen in a community garden if the community decides to make meaningful use of the land by growing leafy greens and vegetables. What you see here are some beautiful glimpses of a community herb garden being maintained by the residents of Sobha Althea-Azalea apartment located in Yelahanka, Bangalore. They use the compost produced in situ and grow organic leafy greens in a small patch of land. Any such holistic activity becomes a beautiful community engagement exercise. The pictures speak for themselves.
Closing the loop: At city level and beyond.
Just like you can compost all the biodegradable waste generated at your home and use it for gardening, a community can also do the same at a much larger scale. Bangalore has several apartments which produce compost more than they need for their own gardening purposes. This excess stock is now being sold to organic farmers, terrace gardeners and resellers through a campaign called Swachagraha Compost Connect (SGCC) run by Solid Waste Management Round Table. Click HERE to know more about this wonderful initiative. This shows the endless possibilities one can achieve just by segregating and composting one’s own precious biodegradable waste. It’s all about doing great things in a small way.
In this way, composting as the beginning of a beautiful story can be endlessly enchanting.
Ditch These Bogus 24-Hour Composters
These 24-hour composters are the worst thing to happen ever since composting at community level began sometime in 2011-12. These monstrous machines—that can throw up power bills running into Rs 25,000-30,000 per month— have now become real estate builders’ favourites all over India. One of the main attractions is they occupy far less space than other solutions even though these bogus machines cost a lot more.
Most of the apartments who have been saddled with these machines have junked them in a corner and are looking sustainable solutions. But lack of designated space to install any other solution has been the main hindrance.
What these machine put out is not compost. It’s burnt carbon. You will end up damaging the soil composition in your garden in case you ignore the horrible consequences being suffered by other citizens and continue to dump all sorts of waste into these machines.
Please remember: the first lot to be vitimised by these machines are you, your family, your pets, your community. Because, the output (which even the machine makers refuse to buy/take back) will damage the air, the water and the soil around you. On top of it, after spending lakhs of rupees to pay the power bills, you will have to send it for landfilling through a private contractor.
To know more about these machines, click HERE.