Starting Waste Management from the scratch
While working at Kabini River Lodge in
2009, I was faced with a task of managing waste sustainably. The current system
consisted of ad-hoc segregation and burning of non-recyclable items. With a
large wild boar and monkey population, the area around the waste unit remained unhygienic
and poorly managed.
For me as well as the visitors who chanced upon the dump
area, this was an unacceptable situation and I decided to go ahead and improve
the current situation.
Our team found that we were selling Rs.
25000-35000 worth of material to the local kabaddi-wallahs and the rest was burnt
or buried. First, we started with segregating units and in the process ending
up making 8 different partitions for various kinds of waste. The construction
was done using unused tiles, old wooden and steel pipes and scraps. Thereafter,
we fenced the area and made sure that wild boar did not get an access to the
waste region. The process of segregation began in earnest and soon, the system
became fine-tuned enough to ensure that all staff were segregating waste at the
source. Then, we realized that we have to do something with the wet waste and set
up a bio-dynamic compost unit followed by a vermiculture setup. We entered into
a deal with the local milk supplier and he agreed to take the remaining wet
waste and in return provide us with 5 litres of milk daily which amount to Rs.
150 per day during those days.
As a sample, we sold the collected
waste after a few months and realized that we earned about Rs. 25000 for three
months itself which was equal to the annual income earned previously. Soon, we
started earning Rs. 100000 plus per year from the unit.
Thereafter, we entered into a discussion
with Saahas, an NGO from Bangalore which sent our tetrapacks to a company called
Damanganga in Gujarat for processing. We also started collecting dry leaves
from the campus and started converting it to compost. Soon involved other
resorts in the region, some of whom started handing over their dry waste to us.
We also appointed a waste management
officer who was an elderly local and whose prime responsibility was to organize
the waste and ensure that hygiene is maintained in addition to taking care of
the sale of material. With the segregation and composting unit working at full
pace, we worked with a local carpenter to ensure that all individual pieces of
wood was re-used and converted into signage or civil construction.
In retrospect, I look back upon those
days as one of the best times in my life as along with the staff, we managed to
tackle a long pending problem and bring respect to the staff who managed waste.
As part of wildlife nature trails for visitors, a component of a walk through
the waste managed unit was also incorporated into the activity. It became a
self-financing venture and also received acknowledgement from various visitors
working in the field of sustainability from Bangalore. I learnt how to work
with the local villagers and towards the end, similar ventures in all the 21 camps in the state of
Karnataka started with varying degrees of success.
