Kitchen Waste Taught Us Kitchen Gardening
By Afsel C.K
“People in Norway or Switzerland feel upset when their kitchen waste quantity is lesser compared to previous months as they use it as an input for their renewable energy systems and compost for kitchen garden”. In India, the urban local self-governance units such as Corporation or Municipality flashes a picture of people or vehicles carrying the wastes from the streets and that originate from our kitchens on a daily basis. “I stopped segregating waste anymore as we came to know we end up wasting our efforts– we segregate the waste and BBMP contractors mixes it back before dumping it in the peri urban landscape of Bangalore” — one of my friends staying in Richmond Town, who is actively involved in local politics sarcastically complained on the plight of waste management experience of garden city.
How did the kitchen waste get produce in our kitchen? We shop almost every day and bring in our day to day consumption of essential food produce like grains, vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, milk etc. Firstly, during preparation of consumable dishes, we end up leaving behind non-edible parts of the food produced in our waste bin. Secondly, we end up not consuming all food we initially intended to eat and filled in our plates due to our incorrect estimation of our appetite or mis-match of expected taste and actual taste along with non-edible portion of food we leave in our plates. Finally, due to bad overall estimation of demand of the day, what we over cook and what we under consume may fail to remain edible due to unforeseen circumstances. All of these constitute kitchen waste which needs careful treatment for the overall wellbeing of our environment and society.
When we relocated from Garden City to my hometown — Thalasseri (Kerala), we travelled along with some soil in a rose pot bought from Lalbagh which was in our balcony for some time. We noticed the soil in the pot was so fertile that when my son with his grandmother after spending their evenings in nearby Richmond park bought Guava sprinkled with mouthwatering spicy chat masala unintentionally fell in the pot gave birth to a new Guava sapling in our concrete jungle. My wife nurtured the soil using kitchen waste like tea powder or eggshells which was equally amusing for the plants in the pot and sparrows visit them occasionally our balcony.
Being one of the ward development committee members of the local self-governance body, one of the oldest Municipality in India celebrated 150th anniversary of its formation recently, I got an opportunity to attend planning meetings at ward council-level first and Municipal council-level next, in which I expressed my concerns for not having a sustainable solution to manage household kitchen waste as well as other wastes which can cause health issues if required attention is not paid by the ruling dispensation drawing from my lived experience in Bangalore. One of the committee member came to me and whispered in my ear that “the waste management solution do not lie with the Municipality, rather it’s with ‘us’, the responsible citizens who should be mindful of controlling our buying behaviors and consumption pattern keeping in mind the ways and means of reducing wastes in the first place and processing it wherever it is originating”.
We applied for two pipe compost promoted by the Municipality with subsidy along with growbags, saplings of red lady papaya, ladies’ finger, brinjal, chili, ginger, turmeric etc. Later on, our applications for pipe compost, growbags and saplings got approved. We installed two pipe compost in our kitchen garden which became our repository of input for sapling planted in our kitchen garden. When both pipes got filled, we took out the oldest pipe and buried the waste in soil. When the next pipe got filled, the older one was taken out and buried the waste in another spot nearby. Next time, when the pipe got filled, first buried spot is extracted to fill the growbag and bury the waste from the pipe. This process continued in a cyclical fashion, where in our kitchen waste found its place first in the pipe then inside the kitchen garden soil and later on inside the growbags to provide nourishment to the saplings in the making of new homegrown vegetables and fruits completely organic.
Nowadays, our kitchen garden became so fertile that we get ginger, turmeric, black pepper, red chili, chili pepper, curry leaf, mint, lemon, holy basil, aloe vera, ladies’ finger, beans, red spinach, red lady papaya and Guava. Very often our kids enjoy the art of plucking Guava themselves, cutting and sprinkling self-made chat masala to have delicious evening snack to make us feel nostalgic without missing the taste of Garden City Richmond Park Guava!
