Residents, gated communities in Chennai join hands to process wet waste

Chennai: To promote source segregation, efficient processing of wet waste generated at home and reduce burden on city's waste management system, several of Chennai's prominent gated communities and residential neighbourhoods are coming together to implement cost-effective solutions.

It all began as simple source segregation drive at a handful of households in Kasturba Nagar, Adyar, a few years ago.

Today, residents of Kasturba Nagar association (ROKA) in collaboration with Okapi research and advisory, Chennai resilience centre, and the urban ocean programme consortium have stepped up the initiative and have introduced lane composters capable of processing up to 750kg of waste a month, and generating up to 230 kgs of compost.




It has set the ball rolling for other communities. Clover by the River, a gated community in Kotturpuram, is the latest addition to the list, setting up two lane composters to process wet waste. "Our team of 10 members work in the waste management space. One of the composters is almost full. It will take about 40 days for waste to turn into compost," said Anu Narayan, a green team member of the community.

Okapi approached ROKA to set up composters. "This was after we did a trash audit, which revealed that organic and wet waste comprised more than 45% of waste generated," said A Ayesha, research associate, Okapi.

This has decentralized the corporation's work. "A portion of waste collected by conservancy workers is diverted to our lane composters, set up at three major points in our neighbourhood. The compost generated is distributed to the neighbourhood," said Janani Venkitesh, ROKA secretary. The composters, set up at a cost of 60,000, collectively processed 10 tonnes of wet waste from Oct 2023 to Jan this year and generated 3.2 tonnes of compost.

Several other communities have expressed interest in the practice. A member of Kalakshetra colony residents welfare association said, "We are engaged in collection of soft plastics and want to work towards wet waste as well. We are looking to set up a compost system soon," he added.

Rakesh a resident of Poonamallee said similar efforts are under way at his gated community Golden Opulence. "We have identified a tower for the purpose. People were taught basics of source segregation. The next level is setting up composters," he added.