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household waste management

How to properly manage your household waste?

written by admin

If you’ve read our previous blog — Is Household Waste Harmful To Environment? — you must have understood the consequences of sending your household organic waste to landfills without segregating it from the inorganic waste.

In this article, we’ll tell you the ideal way to segregate your waste & how you can do better things with your organic waste other than simply sending it to landfills.

But before moving any further, let’s just quickly understand what the Govt. rules & guidelines say about waste management.

Segregation of waste at source

Segregation of waste at source is a practice through which you separate and organize your waste before sending it to landfills so that it can treated to the best of efficiency.

Why segregate waste at source?

According to a report by MoHUA, 30% to 55% of Municipal solid waste is organic biodegradable matter?

Also, inert matter comprises 40% to 55%, and recyclables 5% to 15%.

If you take these numbers into account you’ll realize that there is a vast chunk of MSW that can be prevented going to landfills.

Hence, it makes it extremely important to segregate your waste at source.

How to segregate your waste at source?

In India, there are already rules in place on how to segregate the types of wastes at source. Below is the Solid Waste Management (SMW) rule for household waste in India.

Solid Waste Management Rules in India

To give you a background, Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) in 2016 inaugurated Solid Waste Management Rules.

For household waste, there is a rule that clearly states that the segregation of waste at the source is mandatory. Under this rule, households must seperate waste into 3 categories —

Organic or Biodegradable waste
Dry waste, such as plastic, paper, metal and wood
Domestic Hazardous waste, such as diapers, napkins, mosquito repellents, and cleaning agents.

Composting — The Best Decentralized Waste Management Method

In this section we’d discuss:

What is Decentralized Waste Management?

Why Composting is the best decentralized waste management method?

What is Decentralized Waste Management?

When a community manage & process their waste in thor locality itself, and send little to no waste to their respective centralised large processing facility such as landfills, is known as Decentralised waste management.

Why Composting is the best decentralized waste management method?

Since much of the Municipal solid waste (30% to 55%) is organic biodegradable matter, it makes a strong case for Composting to be adopted as a staple decentralized waste management method.

Also, composting has a multi-directional advantage, such as:

The organic waste that otherwise would have ended up in landfills is converted into compost. This minimizes the Methane (CH4) emission which is the 2nd most holds a staggering 20% of total GHG emissions.
The resulted compost helps replenishing earth with essential nutrients to make it support the plant life in a better way. Plants, as you all know utilize CO2, the most emitted GHG, to make food. Hence, composting, indirectly, also lowering the CO2 levels from the atmosphere.

Also, you can generate a side income from it.

How can you turn household waste into compost? – The Conventional Way

Composting household waste requires a little knowledge & a little effort.

First thing first, composting involves the breaking down of organic matter (food waste) in the presence of air & water. Organic matter breaks down with the help of microorganisms and small insects present in nature.

In order to break down organic matter into compost, composting organisms require 4 conditions:

1. BROWN organic matter, i.e. carbon-rich organic matter such as dried leaves, sawdust, paper, etc.

2. GREEN organic matter, i.e. nitrogen-rich organic matter such as fruit & vegetable waste, coffee grounds, etc.

3. Oxygen that comes from air.

4. Water in the right amounts.

1. Take a wooden compost bin or a large earthen pot or a bucket with 4 to 5 holes around the container at different levels for aeration.

2. Spread a layer of soil at the bottom.

3. Now add an alternate layer of edible kitchen waste such as food scrapes & peels, wasted cooked food (small amounts), etc. and dry organic matter, such as dried leaves, sawdust, etc.

4. Cover your compost bin with a plastic sheet or a plank of wood to help retain moisture and heat.

5. Give your pile a quick turn every few days to facilitate aeration.

Sprinkle some water, if you think the pile is too dry, to make it moist. Please note the goal here is to moist the matter & not get it wet.

Taking our climatic condition into account, your compost should be ready within a month.

The key characteristics of a good compost is that it is dry, dark brown and crumbly and smells of earth.

How can you turn household waste into compost? – The Modern Way

If you live in a society that encourages & appreciates the Decentralized Waste Management, you can opt for our GoClean Organic Waste Reprocessors.

The salient features of GoClean Organic Waste Reprocessor are:

1. A variety of capacity options

GoClean composters come in a wide variety of capacity options, ranging from 25 KG to 1000 KG.

So doesn’t matter whether you’re a small society or a big one, we have a GoClean composter for you.

2. Superfast Composting

GoClean composters convert your organic waste into compost within 24 hours.

This way you never have to worry about everyday waste storage.

3. Enclosed Structure

With an enclosed structure, it makes sure that there is no smell coming out of your pile.

4. Automatic Machine

In the whole process of waste to compost, no manual process is involved except for loading and unloading.

GoClean Organic Waste Reprocessors has already been installed at some notable places where they are helping the places to move on the road of sustainability.

If your society also wants to adopt composting as a decentralized waste management method, click here.

April 23, 2022 0 comment

Organic Waste Management

Is Household Waste Harmful to the Environment?

written by admin

What is Household waste?

In simpler terms, it is the waste produced in an average residential household. It mainly comprises your

kitchen waste,
food waste,
stationery & paper waste,
dry municipal waste (sanitary pads, tampons, and other menstrual hygiene products), and hazardous waste (Fluorescent lamps/bulbs, etc.).

What is the cause of the increase in household waste?

With the rise of population, there’s also been a rise in the amount of waste produced. The automated lifestyle & industrialized human societies just add more to it.

Take the industrial revolution for example that has introduced new manufactured products & new manufacturing processes. This modern consumerism and the excess packaging has contributed significantly to the rise of household solid waste.

What happens to household waste in India?

The rapid urbanization has presented our country with a massive waste management challenge.

As per a report published in 2016, approximately 62 million tonnes of waste is generated in India per annum by over 377 million urban people living in 7,935 towns and cities.

The same report also states that only 43 million tonnes out of these 62 million tonnes of waste are collected. What’s more surprising is that only 11.9 million tonnes of the collected waste is treated and the rest 31 million tonnes are dumped in landfill sites.

With this rate, waste generation is estimated to reach 165 million tonnes per year by 2030.

Is sending waste to landfills a good idea?

Since almost half of our municipal waste generated in a year ends up in landfills, here’s a quick question — what do you think happens to the waste that ends up in the landfill?

Decomposition, right?

Wrong!

Organic waste in landfills undergoes anaerobic decomposition and that produces methane gas as byproducts.

Those who don’t know about Methane (CH4), it is the second-largest greenhouse gas and accounts for 20% of global GHG emissions. Methane is also more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere.

All this and we haven’t even talked about the land & water pollution it causes yet.

Why is segregation of waste at the source the need of the hour?

Our decades-old habit — ‘All Waste, One Pot’ — of waste collection is now coming on our way to a pollution-free nation.

How?

The mixing of all waste into one makes it very hard to segregate it at the waste collection stage. This non-segregated waste is then sent to landfills, and we have already discussed what happens there.

The key to successful waste management lies in the segregation of waste at the source.

When we become responsible enough to separate wet and dry waste, recyclables, organic waste, hazardous waste, etc. at the source, it makes it way more easier to get treated in a proper manner.

And it’s not like these changes are very difficult to implement. Take Indore waste management model for example. This model helped Indore to become India’s Cleanest City for the fifth time in a row.

This model promoted a behavioural change among the masses towards waste segregation and also placed a system in place through which 100% waste collection is possible.

Combining these two factors, Indore is now what every other Indian city aspires to be.

But it’s not just Indore, many initiatives have been taken across the country to ensure smooth waste processing — transforming waste into a usable form.

In fact, this report by Statista shows what percentage of collected waste was processed from 2016 to 2020.

The numbers are in our favour. However, we’re still far from reaching the 100% mark and remember, there’s still a majority of waste (almost 50%) that has even been collected.

To wrap it up, population & modernization are 2 factors that are contributing to the increase in household waste. Also, throwing every waste into the same bin makes it difficult to segregate in the later stages. Further, when this unsegregated waste goes to landfills, it produces methane (CH4) that is harmful for the environment.

Lastly, waste segregation at the source is good, but we need to find better ways like composting the household organic waste, if we want a sustainable development.

When talking about composting, we’re sure you have a lot of questions in mind like What’s the process? What goes into the composting bin? etc.

Don’t worry! We’ll answer them all & much more in our next blog post. Till then, stay tuned!

April 16, 2022 0 comment