Change your Dust Bins to Eco-Bins

The watch-words of Exnora International, which is striving to make a cleaner, greener Chennai, is Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The first step in all these begins at home, where mounds of garbage are generated. This garbage is normally thrown into the bins on the streets, or more often around them! But how much do we really know about the garbage we produce in tonnes?

Garbage is of two kinds - organic waste, which is perishable and degradable like kitchen waste, and inorganic waste, which is non-bio degradable and has to be recycled, like paper, plastic, glass and so on. Once garbage is thrown out of the house, the first person to come into the picture is the rag picker, nowadays rightly called the 'street beautifier", who actually provides immense service to society. It is he who separates the inorganic waste in the bins and sells it for recycling. Otherwise, all the garbage - organic, inorganic and everything else - would be dumped at secondary collection units like the dump yards, creating health hazards, choking the water drains, the soil and just about every thing.

It is in this context that "segregation of garbage at source" assumes importance. A prime step in realizing the goal of "zero garbage" production, segregation at source simply means having two dust bins at home, one for dumping the perishable, degradable kitchen waste and the other for recyclable things which can be given to the street beautifiers. What to do with the perishable waste that forms nearly 30% of household garbage?

The answer is ECO-BINS. Eco-bin is simply adopting the vermicomposting technique to a table top garbage recycling unit. You do not require extensive space. It only just about replaces the dust bin and living in an apartment is no hindrance at all. Organic kitchen waste can be directly deposited in the eco-bin, thereby eliminating further handling or mis-handling. At the same time you can produce manure for your household plants or you may even market the manure. 

What do you require to set up an eco-bin?

The first and foremost thing is the desire to bring about a change in the way we haphazardly dispose of garbage. The rest is all very very easy. You will need a plastic tank or bucket, gravel, sand, top soil or good loam that contains clay, sand and decayed vegetable matter, about 50-70 numbers local varieties of earth worms, fresh cow dung, dry hay, a few coconut or palmyrah fronds and water. 

Once you have assembled these items just follow the diagrams step by step and develop your eco-bin. It is important that after the bin is set up, garbage is not added till 30 days and manure is harvested 45 days after the last application of garbage. Therefore it makes sense to have two eco-bins in every household to be used in rotation.