julio d’silva
julio@herald-goa.com
The Navelim Village Panchayat has stolen a march on neighbouring Margao Municipal Council over segregated garbage collection by focusing on wet waste collection from housing societies and making it a success.
The panchayat collects wet waste every alternate day from three housing societies while five housing societies in the village have set up their own composting units and deal with the wet waste collected in those societies by converting it into fertilizer.
Interestingly, besides the five housing societies that have set up their own composting unit, some villagers including two panchayat members have also taken up composting wet waste. Panchayat members of Dongorim and Fradilem Bebinda Gonsalves and Leena Rebello respectively have set up composting machines. Leena Rebello said she was composting only her wet waste and proposed to introduce composting to the two buildings next to her house.
“While these two (Bebinda and Leena) have already set up the composting units, other panchayat members are also considering taking up composting in their wards,” said Sarpanch Wilma D’Silva.
Two other villagers, who are members of the Village Development Committee namely Gerald Pereira and Eliterio Carneiro, have also set up composting units in their backyard along with another villager Placido Mascarenhas. Incidentally, the owners of Blasco Executive Centre where parties including wedding receptions are hosted, have also set up a composting unit.
Gerald Pereira has adopted vermicompost to deal with only his wet garbage for the last six months. “I get the fertilizer in liquid form that I dilute and use for my plants,” he said while disclosing that for him it is just an experiment.
Eliterio Carneiro, on the other hand, treats nearly 500 kgs of wet garbage every day that he collects from various people, including those residing in buildings and even hotels. He used black soldier fly larvae to convert the waste into compost. “Five kgs of waste can be converted into fertilizer within 48 hours by the larvae that also keep multiplying and adding the numbers,” he said.
Being the chairman of Navelchea Xetkarancho Ekvott Co-operative Society he distributes the fertilizer to the farmers so that they get back to organic farming and has no plans to sell the compost prepared by him.
Navelim panchayat has three labourers dealing with the garbage in the village, While two visit the households to collect the waste, one stays at the panchayat building segregating the mixed waste collected and also operates the composting machine purchased by the panchayat about a year back at the cost of Rs 6 lakhs.
The wet waste collected from the three housing societies along with the wet waste gathered from the mixed waste is dumped in the machine where it gets converted into fertilizer after 24 hours and the resultant sludge is drained off in the septic tank.
The machine can take 75 kgs of wet waste per day from which the panchayat gets around 25 kgs of fertilizer. The panchayat has so far given away around 40 kgs of fertilizer to people who wanted to use it but has now started selling it at the rate of Rs 10 per kg.
“The housing societies give their waste every alternate day and store it in their refrigerator for one day,” revealed the Deputy Sarpanch Paul Pereira and added that probably because the panchayat charges Rs 10 per unit of wet waste collected, people give two days’ wet waste together.
The dry waste is taken away by the Solid Waste Management and in the month of October, 21 tonnes of dry waste was taken away from Navelim panchayat. The panchayat has been selected for an award for best implementation of Swachh Bharat campaign and has been presented the award by the Governor on December 19, 2017.
