Reacting to the report on the failure of pipe-composting in the wards of the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, WWF State director Renjan Mathew Varghese, a resident of Akshara Veedhi and a member of the residents’ association there, shares his experience with the pipe-compost project being implemented in the houses under the association.
He writes that it is a total disaster. ‘’I fully support decentralised waste management and I believe that we need to take responsibility for the waste we generate,’’ he says.
Renjan writes: I fully support the household-level pipe-composting project of the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation. But my only concern is with its implementation. Unskilled labourers are just coming to the houses and they are not even taking pits of proper dimensions to hold the pipe and house the waste.
As a result, the waste is not breaking down properly. What they advise is to use one pipe for 45 days and then use the other and by the end of 90 days, you can take out the waste from the first pipe and use it in the home gardens. By that time, the waste in the first pipe is just like a slurry and it is even impossible to remove it from the pit.
Because this has been the outcome in many houses where the project is being implemented, many are not taking this option of erecting the pipe-composting units in their homes.
I attended the ‘Decentralised SWM workshop - Options available’ organised by Suchitwa Mission in Kanakakkunnu and I saw the technical presentation on pipe-composting. What was presented and what is happening at the field level have no relation.
The technical expert was saying that you do not even need any outside labour to get this done. You can get this done at home by yourselves. Why doesn’t the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation take adequate time, employ the Cleanwell women labourers and also associate NGOs as technical experts to get this work done? They can print a good leaflet on how to do this and encourage families to go for it.
The present agenda of setting up one lakh pipe-composting units in a short period of time as a solution to our SWM is absolute nonsense. It will ultimately end up like the vermicompost units which were installed earlier through residents’ associations. Now every household has unused rings in their homes. Six months later, they will have two more PVC pipes added to their junk!
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