Team Herald
MARGAO: The Navelim Panchayat has set in place a very effective mechanism to deal with the wet garbage that used to be generally thrown by the road side.
The mechanism involves 15 wet garbage collection units set up in different parts of the village of which 12 are fitted in 300 lts tanks while the other three have a capacity of 1000 lts.
This was set by the concerted efforts of the village development committee convener Eleuterio Carneiro.
Eleurterio, who has studied wet garbage management since 2010, has come out with this contraption where simple material including the tank and pipes are purchased from a hardware shop and then installed by a person he has trained for the job and to prepare a 300 lts mechanism; it costs around Rs 6000 besides the rickshaw charges to transport the machine to the house.
The instrument is prepared from a hard plastic tank with tender coconut shells arranged on the base over which wood shavings are spread. The daily wet waste is dumped in the container where black soldier fly larvae are introduced.
The instrument has two entry points on top, one exit chute on top and one outlet at the bottom where the leachate is collected. The leachate is rich in nitrogen and hence can be used as liquid fertilizer by diluting it.
The larvae feed on the wet waste and while some turn into cocoon and hatch into flies most crawl out and are an excellent feed for fowls or ducks that grow well in size and deliver eggs regularly without being fed any supplementary food.
The cocoons mate and the pregnant fly lays its eggs in the specially prepared nest that is attached to the two entry pipes right on top. The eggs then hatch into larvae which drop in the bin and the same cycle repeats with the larvae feeding on the wet garbage.
The garbage is then turned into compost and can be used as fertilizer and in fact Eleuterio uses it to grow organic paddy in his fields and also for the few plants he has at home.
Each of the 11 panchayat members of Navelim village have installed this type of digester for wet waste in their courtyard and besides using it to clear their own wet waste, they also collect wet garbage from the neighbours including buildings and this has resulted in a drastic reduction of dumping garbage by the roadside.
Navelim panchayat has also made it mandatory for builders to have garbage segregation and composting unit before issuing occupancy certificate for any new construction. One builder Mario D’Costa whose structure has 17 flats has set up such a plant with 1000 lts capacity.
Royal Builders have installed a biogas plant where all the wet waste from the occupants of the various flats is converted into biogas that is presently used by the watchmen to cook his meals while in the near future it is proposed to use this biogas to illuminate the LED lights fitted on the compound wall and also run a generator.
Two other biogas plants are installed including one at an old building called Tamara Apartments at Fraudilem. The biogas plant produces 400 gms of biogas from 3 kts of waste to which 3 litres of water is added.
Besides, the panchayat has also installed a composting machine that works on the dehydration principle and converts 74 kgs of waste every day. The remaining around 500 kgs of wet garbage collected every day is treated through the machines using the black soldier fly larvae and some use it for their piggeries.
