Residents of Ashtabinayak apartment display the ‘roli poli composter’, which converts biodegradable waste into green manure. Picture by Ashwinee Pati

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 5: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, in association with Jagruti, has launched a pilot project to make green manure from biodegradable waste at apartments in the Kalpana area.

The initiative could be replicated in other city areas as well.

A machine that can turn waste into compost within two weeks has been installed at Ashtabinayak apartments with Jagruti, a service provider in solid waste management, providing financial and technical assistance.

The machine has two parts — the “chippy choppy organic waste crusher”, which crushes degradable waste such as vegetable and food residue — and the “roli-poli composter”, which helps generate the green manure.

The paste produced after crushing the waste is put into the composter and mixed with lime and sawdust. With the help of atmospheric temperature, air and moisture, the mixture turns into green manure.

“The machine works on waste generated by 20 households in the apartment block. This is a pilot project and we have adopted it for the first time in the city,” said Sunil Agrawal, president of the apartment’s residents’ welfare association.

Subhendu Sekhar Mohapatra, a solid waste management expert and the brain behind the initiative, said: “The city generates around 440 metric tonnes (MT) of solid waste in a single day, but people can reduce the burden by adopting the composting method. As a tractor full of compost or green manure costs around Rs 1,500, people can also benefit financially.”

With apartment blocks mushrooming, solid waste has become an unwieldy burden. “This pilot initiative will be a tool to sensitise people living in apartment blocks. The machine costs Rs 30,000, but just two people are enough to operate the system. The monetary returns from the green manure and recycling plastic waste will be used to pay their salaries,” said a senior corporation official.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said: “Our express cleaning service, an initiative to include apartment blocks in the daily solid waste collection mechanism of the corporation, is not finding many takers.”

“We can also examine options to use this method for big institutions and colonies,” he said. “If we can separate biodegradable waste at the domestic level, the city can get rid of a huge load. It can also help rejuvenate the city’s green cover,” said Mohapatra.