The Hindu Business Line : Mysore civic body converts garbage into bio-manure

For the last one-and-a-half years, a programme has been on to convert around 220 tonnes of garbage a day into organic manure at a Mysore plant. The plant was set up with with ADB assistance of Rs 3.75 crore.

The city corporation has leased out the plant to Vennar for a period of ten years, said Mr Selva Kumar, Commissioner of Mysore at a press conference here. Vennar operates the plant, and produces around 40 tonnes of fertiliser a day.

The garbage is kept on platforms for 28 days and is aerobically decomposed using microbes. Finally nutrients are added to the product, depending on which crop it is going to be used for.

The product, under the brand name "Rich Organics", is marketed by Vennar. Customers include the Karnataka Forest Department, the Andhra Pradesh Horticulture Department, Advanta India, Infosys, Mysore and the Eagleton Golf Course in Bidadi.

"We also sell to farmers in Karnataka and Kerala," the Managing Director of Vennar, Mr V. Narendra Babu, said.

The Mysore City Corporation gets royalty and a part of the margins from the sale. In addition, the programme helps to keep the city clean. The area required as "landfill" site has also reduced, as the plant decomposes everything but plastics and non-biodegradable garbage.

Vennar has hired sixteen agriculture graduates to market the product from "Bellary to Shimoga". However, with this year's drought, "we could not do much," said Mr Babu. The company has been selling manure to Tamil Nadu and cardamom growers in Kerala.

Organic manure is less expensive than chemical fertilisers, improves the soil and helps conservation of water, said Prof Narayan Gowda, University of Agricultural Sciences. For the same amount of money as farmers spend on chemical fertilisers, bio-fertilisers can give a better quality of output, he said.

After the Green Revolution, the excess use of chemical fertilisers, the reduction in farm yard manure because of the decrease in cattle population have resulted in a decrease in the number of earthworms and useful microbes in the soil.

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