On a sweaty, humid afternoon in late July, a packed audience in a small classroom in Panchshila’s Montessori School listened intently. Gardeners and cooks like Harikesh, Ramesh, Naresh, Hari and Ram Shankar and others, along with many colony residents paid close attention to Fabian Panthaki, Brand Ambassador, Swachh Survekshan, MCD and Administrator, Sarvapriya Vihar Green Team, as he explained how we can all stop kitchen wet waste from entering the dense mountains of trash that skirt Delhi. These landfills (the one in Ghazipur is one-and-half times the size of the Taj Mahal complex and is 12-stories high) are one of most terrifyingly efficient sources of methane emission that cause pollution and associated diseases.
If the climate crisis seems remote, something that needs to be handled only by policy planners and the government, this third workshop organised by Panchshila Park’s Home Composting team in a space of nine months reminded nearly 30 participants that a large portion of the organic matter located in the landfills comes from households; and that individual choices do matter.Panthaki and some home composters like Mehreen Khosla and gardener Shankar explained in detail how easy it is to transform the daily amounts of uncooked kitchen waste (vegetable and fruit peels, egg shells, coffee dregs, tea leaves and so on) into thoughtfully created organic matter. Through a simple process of aeration, and by layering dry materials, like coco peat or dry leaves, with wet waste, at the end of six weeks it’s possible to convert scraps from your kitchen into nutrient rich fertiliser for your pots, plants and gardens; and your friendly neighbours! It’s that easy. The end product looks like rich black soil, sometimes called ‘black gold’, and may sometimes have the faintest odour of khaad; but that the thrill and satisfaction in knowing that you have done the right thing by responsibly recycling and have played a very, very small part in reducing that nightmarish landfill is matchless.
