A Zero Waste Lifestyle With Compost

Imagine a ‘Swachh Bharat’. Imagine empty roads and green borders; fragrant soil of earth and lawns of supple grass. Imagine rivers running blue and garbage mounds not taking over the horizon. Imagine that beginning from your backyard.

It’s hard not to wrinkle one’s nose upon crossing the seven-storey high mounds of unsegregated waste that are the landfills of Delhi. One would also argue that it is equally difficult to carry the weight of its treatment, despite wanting to do something about it. India’s average per capita waste generation stands at 0.62 kilograms per day. That amounts to 226.3 kilograms of waste per person, per year. According to the 2011 census, Delhi NCT alone had 1,67,87,941 people. While these numbers may seem overwhelming, Gurugram’s Surbhi Dua, a 34 year old Strategy Manager at ‘Exly’ has discovered how to break it down. As much as per capita waste contributes to the growing concern of garbage pollution, daily waste management on the same scale can check what finally reaches the landfills. Checking waste disposal on an individual level can create waves of change when all the proverbial drops come together. Since the past three years, Surbhi has hence been nurturing a zero waste household, consistently composting all wet waste and recycling the dry.

A Backbone of Support

Eco conscious citizens like Surbhi are changing the country’s environmental picture one step at a time. In this effort, organisations like Bengaluru based Daily Dump have assisted the common man every step of the way — through awareness generation, education and providing materialistic accessibility. 

With the introduction of the Swachh Bharat Cess in 2015, citizens of conscious communities urged municipal authorities to utilize funds towards waste segregation bins and other accessible waste management facilities. However, the indifference towards passionate effort and the back and forth between slacking arbitrary figures left them disappointed in the resultant impact of the initiative.

The cess was made redundant in 2017, with the coming of a comprehensive GST system.

Being unable to steer communities still dejected from such a blow, Surbhi decided to focus on her own part in minimising waste. This was when she got in touch with the Daily Dump community to resolve questions about composting. Achieving success in her endeavour, she realised how every citizen can minimise waste by simply joining hands. She is now an active part of the network of forces working towards educating people towards sustainable living.

Today, she divulges little tips and tricks to help make composting easier for beginners. For instance, Surbhi believes that not enough attention is paid to the ratio of dry waste to wet waste in a compost heap. Dry waste takes longer to compost, leaving leachate in the pot for large amounts of time to become odorous. To deal with this, and fight the myth of composting being a tedious affair, she suggests making a one-time investment in coco peat. “To begin with, just throw in some coco peat and wet waste in equal ratio. Turn it every two days. It’s that simple,” she says.

The Journey of the Compost

The process of composting involves collecting organic waste matter and recycling it in containers like composting bins, clay pots, plastic buckets, etc. The aerobic decay of waste substances creates an environment for microorganisms to thrive and convert them to ‘Black Gold’ or compost. This is used as soil fertiliser to enrich plant health. “It would always smell so beautiful; like Earth,” says Surbhi as she relates her journey towards mastering this interesting process.

In 2018, she generated her first compost out of a mixture of wet and dry waste. However, the resultant watery and smelly product almost forced her family to show her the door. She was struggling to maintain the process until results were affected; the foulness was something not everyone was ready to put up with. After six months of research and training, she understood where the problem lay — a compost pile needs the right amount of oxygen (while all other elements should be in exact quantities) to release carbon dioxide, an odourless gas, instead of making the compost smelly.

Surbhi shares that upon finding this out, holes were drilled into the clay pots and major dry waste was left out to ensure a faster composting process. The first successful compost brought inspiration to keep going, as at the end of each day she would throw household waste into her own backyard and watch it vanish over time. The breeding insects would release heat and minimise the mass of the matter, so that a simple 10 ltr pot would hold almost 45 days’ worth of her household waste.

The first thought that comes to one’s mind when thinking of composting is the unpleasant atmosphere it creates. But in contrast to the miles’ worth of garbage it eliminates off Earth, Surbhi believed that to be a small price to pay. This was why she persevered through the house flies teeming in the kitchen and the “crawly creatures” frightening her in secret company. With a victorious tone, she also relates that eventual research about their positive impact made her fall in love with nature’s little ones.

Soldier fly — found in wetlands and damp soil — comes to a healthy compost and lays its eggs there. The larvae act as a catalyst in the composting process. Surbhi now believes, “If you see this fly, it means you’re doing something right.” Attracting maggots is another common occurrence, but she suggests keeping a plastic plate/tub beneath the pot and adding some water, so they’re unable to cross the moat and remain safely in the compost bin.

While waste management is riddled with phenomena new to many, a little courage opens way to beautiful processes and a healthier, cleaner lifestyle. Having randomly thrown in Iranian date seeds at the end of each day, Surbhi soon realised there was a plant growing right inside her waste pot. Seed saplings are extremely resilient, and these survived being uprooted from the pit and being replanted into her home garden.

If you happen to visit her at her house in DLF Phase 2, you’ll be greeted with a date plant sprouting somewhere among the concrete jungle.

Surbhi’s carbon footprint has been reducing by the day. Fuelled by personal effort, she has gone on to ensure that every scrap of non-biodegradable waste from her house is collected by Eco Wise Waste Management Pvt Ltd — a pan Indian sustainable recycling company. As of now it is safe to say that garbage around NCR is down by one household, at the least.

While every citizen cannot be expected to move mountains (literally), taking the first step can prove to be a slow but sure way to make them smaller.