Title: Application of Vegetable Waste to Make Compost Tea Using Bin Composting Technique With Additives - A Review
Abstract: Currently India is the world’s third largest garbage generator and by the year 2050 the waste generation is expected to go up by 436 million tones thus turning India into one big garbage dump. With rapid urbanization, the country is facing massive waste management challenge. Over 377 million urban people live in 7,935 towns and cities and generate 62 million tonnes (MT) of municipal solid waste per annum. Only 43 million tonnes of the waste is collected, 11.9 MT is treated and 31 MT is dumped in landfill sites. Solid Waste Management (SWM) is one among the basic essential services provided by municipal authorities in the country to keep urban centers clean. However, almost all municipal authorities deposit solid waste at a dump yard within or outside the city haphazardly. The increase in waste generation as a by-product of economic development has led to various environmental issues. Energy-from-waste is a crucial element of SWM because it reduces the volume of waste from disposal, also helps in converting the waste into renewable energy and organic manure. Thus installation of waste-to-compost units would reduce the load of landfill sites.
The biodegradable component of India’s solid waste is currently estimated at a little over 50 per cent. It is believed that if we segregate biodegradable waste from the rest, this itself could reduce the challenges by half. In India, disposal of vegetable market waste along with municipal solid waste in landfills or dumpsites is creating much nuisance in terms of odour nuisance, leachate production, and greenhouse gas emission into the atmosphere. Therefore, vegetable waste with high biodegradable and nutrient content needs to be properly disposed. Food waste represents almost 60% from the total municipal solid waste disposed in the landfill. Disposal of vegetable waste, which contains about 60- 80% of moisture to the landfills, causes various problems like easy putrefaction, offensive odour and pollution of ground and surface water by leachate. Due to interruption of the carbon cycle by disposal of waste to landfills, organic vegetable waste requires proper composting system to reduce its uncontrolled degradation on disposal sites and subsequent greenhouse gases, odour and nutrient emissions.
We know that composting is a time consuming process & it requires a specific period of time for the compost to mature completely so that it can be used as organic manure. But with growing population & needs it is necessary to find alternatives, to speed up the process of composting. Also with changing needs & to get maximum benefits, there is a need to change the year’s old method of using traditional compost for agricultural purpose. Here comes the idea of using compost tea instead of traditional compost. Compost tea is defined as filtered products of compost brewed in water and brewing, a steeping process of compost in any solvent (usually water), which lasts for more than one hour (National Organic Standards Board 2004).
Thus there is a need to contribute towards the identification of a system for managing & utilizing vegetable waste for sustainable agriculture use by treating the vegetable waste to produce compost & compost tea.
Publication Year: 2021
Publication Date: 2021-09-01
Language: en
Type: review
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