Trash Center in Tamil Nadu
Chicken and fish waste is no longer garbage: With the help of an NGO, the community of Coonoor, a well-known tourist destination in Tamil Nadu, is converting waste into compost. This compost is also used to fertilize flowers and plant beds. These measures have been well received by the people in the community.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00It draws visitors from far and wide.
00:04The Nilgiri Mountain Railway is one of India's oldest, passing through the Nilgiri Hills
00:09in Tamil Nadu.
00:13The town of Coonoor is a major stop on the way.
00:16The tourists are very welcome here.
00:19In addition to the rolling tea plantations, the holidaymakers are a key source of income.
00:25But there are downsides.
00:27Sixteen tonnes of waste are produced each day by the town's 45,000 residents.
00:33Then there's the garbage left by the tourists.
00:38More than ten years ago, in 2013, after the festival of Diwali, I saw a Facebook post
00:43written by one of my friends stating that they were going to clean the waste thrown
00:48out by the tourists.
00:50So I decided to join in.
00:52Slowly, many other volunteers joined us too.
00:56Then we started to dream about cleaning up the river that runs through Coonoor.
01:00And it was while cleaning the river that we started looking for a place to dump the waste.
01:10There was no modern landfill site in Coonoor at that time.
01:13So the idea of processing the waste was born.
01:17The volunteer garbage collectors set up the Clean Coonoor Organisation.
01:22Their aim?
01:23To keep the mountains clean for themselves and their visitors.
01:27The first step was to separate the garbage into dry and wet waste.
01:31The wet garbage is made up mostly of animal and plant waste.
01:40We collect all the meat waste in one place inside the wet waste unit.
01:45Then it is shifted to a conveyor pallet where the non-organic impurities are removed.
01:51After pulverisation, it is then mixed with other vegetable and food waste.
01:59This mixture then has to dry.
02:01During this process, it gets regularly overturned.
02:05After 40 days, the dry mass is then shredded and ground.
02:09The result is high quality fertiliser that is bought up by local farmers.
02:14The Ooty flower farm is a regular customer.
02:20For all these flowers, we need a pH value of 6 to 7 in our fertilisers.
02:26And because this fertiliser has that, the flowers grow really well.
02:30It's also rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
02:34And it contains micronutrients too, and secondary nutrients like magnesium, sulphate and calcium.
02:41All these help the plants to grow well, both in quantity and quality, with top results.
02:46The waste life of the plants has also increased.
02:49Kunnur now processes two-thirds of its garbage.
02:53Wet waste is turned into fertiliser and 85% of dry waste is recycled.
03:02We are successfully managing waste in this small town with a limited number of people,
03:07resources and market.
03:09If we can do that here, it would definitely be possible in larger towns that have many
03:14advantages over us.
03:16In large towns, there are no problems with transport and there's a lot more garbage.
03:21Here, we have to do everything by hand.
03:24If larger towns were to manage waste like this, it would also be a great success.
03:33Tourists are again flocking to the town this year, drawn by the famous railway and because
03:39Kunnur is a picturesque town, which has got its waste problem under control.