Swachagraha - Take your pledge today!

SwachaGraha is a citizen driven campaign initiated by the Solid Waste Management Round Table Bangalore to address garbage woes in Namma Bengaluru turning our garden city into a garbage city.The campaign challenges you to make you look at the waste you generate as a resource just by starting three green spots.

What are the three green spots?
GreenSpot 1 - Your Composting Spot
Green Spot 2 - Your Garden where you use your compost
Green Spot 3 - Your kitchen, where you cook from vegetables and greens from your garden

How is my Green Spot 1 beneficial?

Swachagraha aims to educate you to understand that Composting is a smell free, non messy, easy peasy process which will reduce your carbon foot print.  60% of the waste every household throws can be managed by composting.  Just by starting this simple process of composting your own wet waste, you will be avoiding it from getting dumped in landfills which will pollute our land, water and air.

How is my Green Spot 2 beneficial?

When you grow your food in your second green spot, you will be blessed with fresh oxygen to breathe from your plants. The plants will grow from your compost and any remains will go back to your compost bin too. Understanding this circle of life with a hands on, in as less space as a small balcony is a soulful experience beyond words. Its therapeutic and will make you a much happier human being. Gardening along with other innumerable benefits teaches you such wonderful skills for life! Its a great family bonding activity too!

How is my Green Spot 3 beneficial?

Imagine harvesting a fresh bunch of palak for palak paneer or cucumbers for a salad, the joy is inexplicable. Technically, you will be saving so much of energy by growing safe food in the confines of your balcony. How? - here's how - 

• You will save fuel energy used to transport your vegetables from a farm 
• You will save energy wasted on herbicides, fungicides and insecticides; all used to grow vegetables in a non-organic set up just by adding your home made compost
• You will save energy used for packaging the vegetables by your supermarket
• You will save energy used by huge refrigeration equipment to keep your vegetables fresh even after days of harvesting it!

Here's a picture of Green spots in my community.

Why should you take the pledge?

Composting is going to save Namma Bengaluru and its one of the coolest things you can do these days. Why else will you see the government talking about it and leading dailies covering about it in Page 2/3 of their newspapers!!

I have taken the pledge because I wish I can leave behind a rich and beautiful legacy of clean air, water and resources for the future generations, because like an old African proverb goes -

"We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children"

So guys, if you think you want to see a cleaner city, take the pledge, start composting, reach out to many more.  Swachagraha is a one-of-a-kind green revolution where people come together to solve their civic problems. Every pledge counts! The target of this campaign is to get a million bangaloreans to start composting, that's why we want your count too!

What will happen after you take a pledge on the swachagraha website?

You will receive an email on the email address you registered with telling you about a simple technique of composting. This is just to show you how easy peasy composting really is. Further when you click on "HOME " button, you will be getting a list of individual and community composting solutions, all listed out with contact numbers for your greater benefit and faster reach.

Link to Individual composting solutions

You finally decide which method you want to follow and go ahead. You will be directed to vendor websites from once your click on the BUY button.

How can you decide among different systems listed?

If you are looking at individual composting solutions, decide between aerobic and anaerobic methods. Like i already mentioned, you will receive an email from the Swachagraha team with a video of a simple home composting solution. You can start doing that right away, or if you want to explore other options too, join our FB page - SwachaGraha and ask away all your doubts and questions. No question is silly and all of us are here to help you out to start composting.

I am convinced that i should start composting, but I am hesitant to start. How can you help?

We have a huge set of mentors and volunteers as a part of the Swachagraha campaign who will readily help you out and make you start. Discuss proactively and you will find that much needed inspiration to start off. Take the "ONE WEEK CHALLENGE".

This challenge calls for layering your veggie and fruit peels in a container with holes with innoculated cocopeat layer alternately. The container can be anything from your unused carton box with holes drilled for aeration to a plastic bucket with holes drilled or terracotta containers. These containers can also be bought. Do this for a week and keep your container aside. After 25 days you will end up in rich compost. This way you will gain confidence in the system, to start off with all your kitchen waste. Do it to believe it, really! 

We are a big community, How can i get more people to compost in this setup?

More the merrier,  Schools, colleges, organisations, apartment complexes fall into this category. Here we are challenging  people in these institutions to take up the "SWACHAGRAHA COMMUNITY PLEDGE". 

Declare the day beforehand and request the people in your organisation to get vegetable and fruit peels on a single day.You can use the invitation available on the swachagraha website to declare the event in your organisation.

Link for Posters

Get each one of them to drop off their peels in the composting drum and add inoculated coco peat to layer it. This is such a humbling activity and will put people from all strata to come together for a great cause.Keep them updated with information of how composting is going on and finally when compost is ready, get them to touch and smell it. This way we are targeting to change the mindsets of people who otherwise thought wet waste was of no use. Further, request each person who participated to take the pledge online and initiate composting at their home/community.

I want to help my friends to compost? How can i do that?

Talk as much as you like to your friend about composting, guide them and get him/her to start off with the one week challenge and post pictures of your activities on Swachagraha Facebook page or email. It will motivate many more friends for life out there to do that!!

Whichever method you start off with, be it community pledge or one week challenge, record your activities and share your pictures over email or on our Facebook page!! This is what is most important, because this being a citizen driven campaign, we need to inspire more people. Remember the Dandi March for our independence? Why is it so popular in history - because people, real people came together and voiced their opinion. These people were the ones who challenged the British that they could think differently and could inspire others. Today, we have a struggle of a different magnitude, a struggle for clean air, water and land. This struggle will affect all the generations that come after us. So lets buck up now and act upon. Lets challenge others to look at waste as a resource. Lets start the three green spots for a better Bengaluru and most importantly inspire each other. That's when we will truly leave a mark similar to the freedom struggle in Indian Independence. So start today and this will be your chance to change the world. 

Website : www.swachagraha.in

Email : swachagraha@gmail.com

Signing off with the tag line of Swachagraha - "BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD!!"

Anyone can Compost!!

Hi All,

Composting - A word which was not there in my dictionary 4 years back because of my ignorance, but now is my daily routine. A word that keeps me grounded, keeps me motivated and makes me look forward to every day with better hope and faith. And its not something new that i have invented, its what mother nature has blessed us with, but only some of us have realized its true meaning.

1. What is Compost and Composting?

As a young child, when my mom told me that i should bury my milk tooth in soil when they fall, i believed her thinking new teeth will grow. Today, I am old enough to understand that my mom handled my fear of losing my teeth very well, but at the same time, mature enough to believe that I am what this soil has made me. I come from it, i am a part of it, i survive on it and i will perish in it. This understanding has deepened my connection with nature and the people around me as well. And because i am nothing but a part of nature, i understand that what i use should also be a part of nature. This has further helped me understand that the things i use on a daily basis need to be nature given, the food i eat need to be nature given and anything that i cannot use anymore needs to go back to nature as well. I don't know which incident triggered such a drastic lifestyle change in my life, but i am glad something did. And i mostly attribute this to my little one, who made me think every second about the kind of things i am giving her or exposing her to!

Composting refers to the degradation of organic matter with presence of air and/or beneficial microbes to produce a nutrient rich, earth smelling product which in turn enriches the nutrient quality of the soil. This product is referred to as COMPOST. While this is something beautiful happening naturally in our environment, the onus is on us to provide suitable conditions for composting to happen. With the extensive use of plastic in our lives, we started using plastics even to dispose our kitchen waste and this is what has mostly led to the garbage volcanoes called landfills in several places in the outskirts of our city.

2. What happens to wet waste when it gets composted? How to compost? What container to use? What is green to brown ratio? 

Like i said earlier, if we can just provide the right conditions, nature will beautifully carry out composting and this can be achieved even in the limits of your own balcony. This post is just to share about one of the most simplest ways to compost kitchen waste. Composting as i have understood is all about balancing the green and brown matter, Green matter is the wet kitchen waste. Brown matter can be anything ranging from dry leaves, saw dust, coco-peat and old compost. Brown matter helps absorb the wetness of the wet waste and the microbes naturally found in the air breakdown the wet waste furthermore to blend with the brown matter. So air happens to be something essential for composting without which the good microbes cannot prevail. Hence, according to me, one of the best containers to choose for composting is a terracotta container because it is naturally porous and it comes from the earth.

Choose any terracotta container of your choice. This can even be your old flower pot. You can drill holes carefully on the sides using a drilling machine. But this is optional, because terracotta is naturally porous. Spread a 2 inch very thick layer of brown matter (anything from the list above) at the bottom of the container. On top of this add a handful of wet waste. Repeat covering the wet waste with another layer of brown matter. Continue to do this till all your wet waste is completely covered with brown matter. Keep the container covered with a terracotta plate or a cotton cloth which will let air pass through. The good microbes that help composting are the same ones that help you digest your food. One of the primary ones, is lactobacillus, which is found in buttermilk. So, sprinkle some buttermilk to the contents of your terracotta container from time to time(ideally 3-4 days once) to introduce the good microbes. I say sprinkle because, we don't want more wetness introduced because of the buttermilk. Use a rake to mix up the buttermilk so that it is evenly introduced in your container. Note that the thick layer at the bottom helps absorb excess water from the composting process and so it needs to be a thick one, or else one might have to deal with excess water coming out. As a safety measure you can even keep the container in a plate and clean the plate in case any water from compost collects.

As this container gets full, let it sit for a week to ten days or more depending on the external temperature while stirring occasionally with buttermilk. Meanwhile start with another container. Make sure you choose a shady spot for your terracotta containers and safeguard it from rain. After 10-15 days, the contents of your first container will have reduced in volume. This is because composting is an exothermic process where heat and water is released. This water needs to be absorbed by our brown matter and eventually the volume of wet waste reduces. In the subsequent days, turn as often as possible to end up in beautiful rich black gold! If you have big hard pieces like mango shells and corn cobs, they will take more cycles to completely compost, so handpick them and add them to your next cycle.You will know when your compost is fully done because it smells beautiful once done, like moist earth. This process takes anywhere between 6-8 weeks when done correctly. This is a very basic  terracotta container composting method that can be tried out to gain confidence in the process of composting.

3) I don't have access to dry leaves and sawdust. What else can be used for brown matter?

For people who do not have access to dry leaves or saw dust and such other brown matter, there are options available too. 

a) You can use a coco-peat brick, available in any gardening store or bought online. Expand it to a powder form if you bought coco-peat brick. Use this powdered coco-peat as your brown matter and continue to add buttermilk once in every 3-4 days. 

b) A microbe infused coco-peat brick is available in the market. You could use this too and this has the added advantage of having the microbes and so you wont have to add buttermilk and turn. Even turning will be avoided with this. Just keep adding wet waste and microbe infused coco-peat in alternate layers and let it sit for 25 days. 

c)Another option is to use dry soil itself as brown matter. This works beautifully too only turning will be more because soil tends to compact.

4) What kinds of kitchen waste can be composted?

You can add all types of wet waste in this process. However, if you are starting as a novice, try with veggie and fruit peels alone initially, then gradually move to add citrus and cooked food too. Avoid adding gravies, strain the water content and add the remains to your compost container. I have friends who compost their non veg waste too. Mango shells, corn cobs and such hard stuff take a long time to compost. But it will eventually get composted. Just handpick these if undone from your container and add it to the next batch. Also, it helps to chop up your veggie and fruit waste into small pieces to increase the surface area for composting. 

5) What are maggots and when do they come? Are they harmful? Can they cause infections? What can i do to control them?

One of the biggest fears of many people to start composting is dealing with maggots. Maggots are larvae of soldier flies that feed on the contents of your kitchen waste and help them turn into compost. They are really beneficial creatures and do not cause any infections. They are not harmful also. In fact maggots speed up the composting process. So, just in case you end up seeing maggots in your container, don't be alarmed, its alright to have them. 

Maggots occur when there is insufficient air circulation in your container or its contents are too wet. If you see maggots in your compost  pile, add more dry brown matter(dry leaves, coco-peat, saw dust etc.) to reduce wetness. Use a rake and turn the contents to introduce more air. Maggots crawl out only when there is insufficiency of oxygen inside and they are suffocating. Like i mentioned earlier, composting being an exothermic process generates heat and proper air circulation is very essential for the maggots to just stay inside and do their work. Also, maggots perish inside your compost, so you wont see any trace of them in your final compost.

6) What commercial composting options are available?

Many commercial vendors have come up with composting solutions. While each of these solutions differ in method, space used and cost, their end product is the same, rich earth smelling compost. Especially for a novice, who wants to try composting in small spaces without going wrong, such options are a boon. I am not commercially involved with any of the composting solutions available in the market. However, I would like to share that i started as a novice, being ignorant about the whole process. I started with one of the commercially available solutions and followed instructions to the "T" only so that i don't go wrong and my family disapproves of the whole thing. I have come to realize now, that the price we pay for each of the commercial solution is the price paid for the research they have carried out in the subject. Nowadays customer support and help forums are really good and can guide you well in the event of any crisis with your method. At present I have four different methods of composting going on working 24x7 in the confines of my balcony.

7) Still i am not convinced to compost, i don't see it returning anything!

Whats more, you can start growing your own food once you generate your compost. No more eating dried greens from the market, you can grow them right at your balcony with compost and coco-peat. This soil-less mix can make it easy for your back while your family is blessed with home grown safe greens to eat. If you have access to bigger space, you can even grow tomatoes, brinjals and cucumbers to name a few, sufficient to feed your family.

Its a great past time for kids, especially the sieving part and my little one is really happy to do it!I feel thankful that she enjoys these things in today's gadget world. And I am happy that i am doing my bit to make the world she is going to live in, a better place!

Whichever method you choose, the aim of this post is to convince you to try composting because it is a beautiful thing to do for yourself and your family. We just need to trust Mother Nature and let her do her job as we provide the right conditions. Imagine if each of us did this beautiful thing, we'd never have to deal with garbage woes and will automatically have cleaner and greener surroundings. The feeling of holding sweet smelling moist black gold in your hands is priceless, liberating and therapeutic.

Lets take this chance and be the change we want to see in this world. Lets minimize plastic in our lives. Lets reduce, reuse and recycle and above all lets give back to Mother Nature what she has gifted us with,  because ANYONE CAN COMPOST ! :)

A Green world

Back to blogging after quite a while now and surely the reason must be strong!

It is WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY today! A day to reinforce our thoughts and actions to preserve nature and protect her.

I wish to write about why it is important to celebrate/take note of this occasion. We have come a long way polluting nature and natural resources. We get back for what we have done, in the form of calamities and unknown diseases, yet we fail to realize that its in our hands to set things right and make it better.

I got hooked on to green living after garbage issue popped up in the city i live in, Bangalore. Once called the garden city, it has been rechristened as garbage city because of the filth that is lying around everywhere. To give statistics, the landfills where garbage is getting dumped (Mandur and the like) faced serious protests from communities nearby. That is when it dawned on the municipality and the people in general, why it was wrong to dump garbage? Why it was wrong to mix wet, dry and other forms of waste?

When i grew up, there was always a pit in the backyard of my house, where most of the leftovers would be dumped and mud/sand was used to cover it so it would not attract flies. Though it did attract rats occasionally, i remember many many years we did this without hassle. I really don't know when and how my beloved city got introduced to garbage bags. But i feel that this is the biggest culprit. People made sure their homes where clean by dumping everything in one black bag and had it collected by the garbage truck. But what about where it went? No one bothered. Result  - pollution of land and underground water in the areas surrounding the landfill, serious health disorders for children born in these areas and the bigger picture, destruction of mother earth. 

Bangalore might be safe from volcanoes or tsunamis based on its geography, but such landfills are man made volcanoes indeed. Imagine the kind of problems they can give our generation and the future ones. Its massive and its scary. Imagine, 10 such volcanoes located all around bangalore. We will only be left with polluted water, land and resources. What legacy then are we leaving behind for our future?

What can be done about all this?

When i read about all this 3 years back, I wanted to badly do something so i wont add to this mess. Though i knew i could not set everything alright over night, I badly wanted a magic wand with which i could make all this mess disappear all at once. But then reality struck me. I tried to segregate waste at my place and avoid garbage bags. But i faced numerous oppositions from my family. I was even told that i wont be able to stop anything when the world is going that way. But i held on. I wanted to reduce the amount of waste i generated. I got conscious about picking up a packaged commodity from a super market. It was hard. Made sure i never purchased garbage bags once again.

Just to give you all some statistics, below is the time it takes for different things to decompose in the environment:


Glass Bottle.......................... 1 million years
Mono filament Fishing Line… 600 years
Plastic Beverage Bottles…… 450 years
Disposable Diapers………… 450 years
Aluminum Can..................... 80-200 years
Foamed Plastic Buoy……… 80 years
Foamed Plastic Cups……… 50 years
Rubber-Boot Sole............... 50-80 years
Tin Cans……………………. 50 years
Leather................................. 50 years
Nylon Fabric........................ 30-40 years
Plastic Film Container........ 20-30 years
Plastic Bag.......................... 10-20 years
Cigarette Butt...................... 1-5 years
Wool Sock............................ 1-5 years
Plywood…………………….. 1-3 years
Waxed Milk Carton………… 3 months
Apple Core…………………. 2 months
Newspaper………………….. 6 weeks
Orange or Banana Peel...... 2-5 weeks
Paper Towel……………….. 2-4 weeks

Information Source: U.S. National Park Service; Mote Marine Lab, Sarasota, FL.

This had an impact on other areas too. I took up home composting. My folks probably thought i was some lady hitler at that point almost killing them with my stare when they mixed up garbage!  But i was strict because i wanted everyone at home to follow it. Today, I am happy i did. Now even my little one knows where wet and dry waste goes.Below is a picture of my aerobic composting set up from Daily dump.

A small shift from the places where i buy made a difference. A whole sale shop selling groceries made more sense to me than a supermarket. I have started carrying bags and do not ask for more bags from anywhere.  Yet, i still have plastic covers because of folks who get stuff in them when they visit us. Such covers, i collect and give to flower sellers and small grocery shops. Infact, now when i visit such shops, the shopkeepers remind me that i have give them covers if i have! 

Steel and glass ware seem more logical than plastic stuff. Though I am unable to throw away the plastic that already exists, I am avoiding adding more to it. And i have learnt to reuse things. An old spoon stand from the kitchen is covered with colored paper and used as pen stand for my little one. These might seem silly at first, but they are really the need of the hour. 

Another big change because of all this, is growing what i eat and making snacks at home. I would have never imagined i would bake a cake for my little one's birthday if someone told me that 3 years ago. But i did !! I am a believer in sustainable living now and strive to make chutneys, powders, pickles and stuff for my kitchen at home.This has indeed reduced so much of packaging that comes with these things. Gardening has been a boon in my life. Its such a sweet medicine for anyone who is looking for some relaxation for the body, mind and soul. Cutting and munching on a slice of cucumber from your own garden, grown from a seed you sowed is an exhilarating experience indeed. I am self sufficient with greens and a few veggies for now and I am really happy about it. There is still a long way to go, lots of things to learn and do, but slowly one day at a time, i am hopeful that i will get there and achieve sustainability.

Why I am sharing all this is to tell you all that, if you have not thought of all this until now, please do. Make small changes in your lifestyle, one at a time, which u can religiously follow until it becomes a habit, like brushing teeth. Become aware of plastics, chemicals and especially what goes into the food you eat. And first and foremost, please start segregating your garbage. Avoid mixing up different wastes. A small step from you CAN make a change. Imagine, if each of us followed segregation religiously, and made sure there was very little or nothing to be dumped in landfills, we would no longer have mandurs...Lets wake up now. 

Some of the solutions to handle different types of waste is as below:

1. Wet waste - Composting at home / community /handing over to authorized wet waste dealers

2. Dry waste 

      Milk packets , newspapers, glass bottles - Raddiwala/ Paperwala 

      Plastic bottles, plastic packaging covers, thermacol and similar items - igotgarbage.com , SAAHAS, Dry       waste collection centres of your ward.

      Old clothes - Orphanages/ To the needy

3. E-waste (Mobiles, charges, Computer parts) -  www.samarthanam.org, SAAHAS

4. Medical waste - Contact your nearby hospital 

If we can religiously follow these atleast 80 percent of the times, I can assure you, you wont have to wake up every morning to empty your garbage bin. It seems like a big task in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it and make it a routine, it easy peasy!

Earth is our home. Its beautiful the way it is. If we ever have to leave behind something for our children, let it be fresh air, clean water and beautiful natural resources. Lets minimize our greed to buy and try to reduce, reuse, recycle and reject things as much as possible. Lets give back more to this world than we got, for,  in giving lies unparallelled joy!

Cheers,

Vasu

A Tangy post!

Its winter and there is hardly much activity in my garden, most plants wish to grow very slowly given the chill weather and harsh sunlight during the day. I am letting them take it as easy as possible and moving around most of the pots so that they see the sun on some days of the week in my little balcony.

I must however admit that I am amazed and surprised at the number of tomato saplings that are sprouting out of the compost side dress i give my pots fortnightly. These are such hardy and resilient plants. They sprout with no effort at all, while there are other seeds which i care for like babies just to see those two true leaves! And with very minimal effort these grow up to 4 feet height when given a good soil and rich compost. They are actually too many in number and now that i cant give home to all of them that sprout, I am generously sharing it with other veggie gardening enthusiasts. Yet, looks like nature wants to keep rewarding me and pushes me to share more and grow more. I have a tomato sprout almost every other day :)

And all this compost is made by me in my kambha which makes it all quite special. The seeds of tomatoes that we consume are thrown into my compost bin and they come back as plants in my pots. Makes me wonder at the magnanimity of life and reiterates that life is a full circle in the literal sense. 

And for being so very generous to me, this post to dedicated to my tomato plants in my little balcony.Will let the pictures below speak for themselves.

Sprouts in unattended containers

Yummiest, tangiest toms ever :)