Recently, a city based non-governmental organization Janadhar has taken an initiative to convert kitchen waste into fertilizers and the first stock of three tonne fertilizer was supplied to farmers from Mulshi tehsil of Pune district. The kitchen waste and huge piles of dumped vegetables at the wholesale market will no longer be the food for stray animals in the city. It is going to be processed and converted into low cost fertilizer for farmers.
The organisation also claimed that the fertilizer is rich and eco-friendly as it does not have any synthetic chemicals that affect the soil texture. The organisation is also keen to take up this project on a large scale and utilise maximum biomass generated in the city for producing fertilizer. The city receives huge supply of leafy and fruit vegetables every day, but a section of it goes waste during its handling. This biomass is generally dumped and stray animals feed on it. Lalit Rathi, vice president of Janadhar said, “We decided to process the waste and test the nutritional value of the fertilizer. We consulted Prakrut Krushi Kendra for better use of the dumped biomass and kitchen waste. The experiment was successful and the fertilizer is produced at much lower cost. We contacted farmers from Mulshi and offered them the organic fertilizer.Farmers also responded positively and we decided to supply the fertilizer to farmers.”
Sujit Chakravarti from Prakrut Krushi Kendra said, “The cost of the fertilizer we have produced is, Rs 3 per kilogram. The current average rate of fertilizer is Rs 22 per kg, though there is a heavy subsidy from the government. The cost of conversion is also not very high, and raw material like biomass and kitchen waste is easily available.” The collected biomass is first crushed, processed and then dried to remove the moisture. The dried material is the organic fertilizer which can be supplied to plants directly or in combination-as per the requirement, he said.
