An organic waste plant, which has been set up to turn vegetable waste generated from the Ooty Municipal Market to organic manure, was inaugurated at Khandal Mukkonam in Udhagamandalam on Friday.
N. Dhanusha, founder of 'Nothing is Waste’, which has tied up with the Udhagamandalam municipality to help deal with the town’s mounting garbage crisis, told The Hindu that approximately four tonnes of vegetable waste is generated at the market each day.
While the waste was previously being dumped in landfills, it will now be brought to the organic waste plant and transformed into organic manure, which will then be sold to farmers.
“From our trials, we have seen that around 16 tonnes of organic manure can be produced each day,” said Ms. Dhanusha, who said that the composting machine set up at Khandal will take around four to five hours to complete one cycle.
The NGO is to sell the organic manure produced in Khandal to farmers at a cost of ₹8 per kg. “The manure produced here is around three times better than normal manure as it is made of only enriched vegetable waste,” added Ms. Dhanusha, who is a part of the four-member team of ‘Nothing is Waste’.
The group is also assisting the town panchayats in the district deal with dry waste by turning low-quality plastic by recycling the items and turning them into building materials. The plant was inaugurated by Nilgiris District Collector Innocent Divya and Commissioner of Food Safety and Drug Administration, P Amudha.