The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, learning from the success of working together with the Citizen Bodies in various projects, recognized the need for greater public participation for good governance and better delivery of civic services. Thus, civic citizen partnership led to the birth of the concept of Advance Locality Management (ALM).
ALMs provide a convenient “Point of Contact” for the citizens with the MCGM to deal with issues/ programmes, mainly related to Solid Waste Management, Disaster Management and other Local Civic Issues (L.C.I).
There are two partners in the ALM
- The Residents Householders and Shopkeepers
- The Administration of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai MCGM
The reason for providing such detailed information is that an ALM from Andheri Mahakali cave, Vishwanath Shetty had arranged a Demonstration cum Presentation on Vermiculture for 30 societies in his area on 5th November 2017, which was attended by 62 members of the societies. This presentation cum demonstration was given by Aniruddha’s Academy of Disaster Management (AADM) in which they have worked out a so called innovation termed “HOUSEHOLD BUCKET BINS”.
As rapid urbanization poses a great challenge to solid waste management in the city, Vermiculture stands as a best solution to this challenge.
It is also the responsibility of the citizens to take initiatives for the betterment of the society they live in. Many of the citizens in cities like Mumbai are ready to participate but are unaware of how they can contribute. This is exactly where NGO’s like AADM plays a very important role.
Aniruddha’s Academy of Disaster Management has envisaged an easy and cheap method at household level wherein biodegradable waste in the kitchen can easily be converted into vermicompost.
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The academy which works on principles laid down by Dr. Aniruddha Joshi, M.D has been training people in setting up vermiculture bins or composting bins in their own household which can take care of the solid waste generated daily. The same can be used as vermicompost in gardens. While implementing vermiculture project at domestic level, AADM found out that individual people are not coming forward to install vermiculture bins in their houses. This is because the obvious space constraint in city like Mumbai and also the need to purchase external bins and other equipment’s which are required to manage these compost bins.
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AADM has come up with an unique idea to convert household water buckets (15Ltr capacity) as Vermiculture bins. Further they suggested everyone to use household old mosquito nets, stones from the debris as the ingredients in vermiculture initial set up.
This idea has made the project acceptable in every household and every year, these bins have helped to yield around 8 tonnes of Vermicompost from household which means converting a huge quantity of 32 tonnes of solid waste to compost.
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The Vermiculture wing of AADM not only helps individuals but also provide support and consultancy to various companies, schools, hotels etc. One such Proposal was received from the Hotel Tunga International. Accordingly an introductory session for the Management staff was arranged. Vermiculture pits were constructed by Tunga Management as per the guidelines provided by the AADM. The project was initiated practically in Dec 2015. As a part of consultancy, training was imparted to their gardeners. 3 to 4 volunteers from AADM would attend the project for an hour daily while on Sunday 10-15 volunteers used to support in major portion of work. The Vermicompost was produced out of uncooked kitchen waste. On an average 25 kgs kitchen waste was converted to vermicompost.
A list of places where AADM has conducted Vermiculture Training sessions is as under:
- SEBI, Naval Dockyard (Colaba), • Central Railway Workshop (Matunga), • FDC Ltd. (Jogeshwari), • Maharashtra State Bank, • DIL Ltd (Thane), • Bhavans College (Andheri), • IES School (Marol), • Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan Vidyalaya, • Thane Mahanagar Palika School etc and the list continues.
The highlight is that Aniruddha’s academy of disaster management has been spreading awareness and the importance of vermiculture since the year 2003 across Maharashtra.
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Vermiculture is a best solution to the challenge of Solid Waste management. Even we the common people can create house hold pits and help government in reducing the problem of solid waste.