Bengaluru is paying a heavy price for its growing population. The city is overflowing with garbages, the civic body is nothing but playing a spectators role in managing wastes. When the authorized paves away from their responsibility, an individual steps in to take the responsibility. Meet Poonam Bir Kasturi, an entrepreneur who manufactures a range of segregation products to encourage responsible waste management.
A social entrepreneur
The city generates nearly 4,000 tonnes of rubbish every day out of which only a few are taken care of by the municipality. The authorities have failed to come up with a proper waste management plan for the rise in the garbage volumes. The city seems to be marching towards a ‘no-way-out’ situation, but waiting for someone to do something about it, is not going to change things around.
Poonam Bir Kasturi, from Bengaluru, has revolutionalized waste across the city with her brilliant idea. The Founder of Daily Dump is in the business of changing citizens’ mindsets towards managing waste in the city.
The Daily Dump provides you with products (a tall cylindrical-shaped composter made of terracotta) that will help you manage organic wastes. It aims for designing and building products and services for decentralized waste management (like decomposer) in homes, communities, offices and public spaces.
“People had never considered composting as an alternative to waste management. Even the government didn’t think it was possible. We defined all the different problem statements and then articulated our objectives. We wanted to convert all these naysayers into believers. We had to convince them by providing good answers for their concerns,” says Poonam.
Her idea of waste management
Poonam’s first step to segregate the waste is to keep the kitchen waste separate from the dry, hazardous, and sanitary waste. The organic waste collected can be stored in the composter. Dry waste is ideally sold or given to recyclers. Hazardous waste (wires, bulbs, batteries, gadgets) must be stored and then deposited for proper and safe disposal. There are many collection centers for this all over the city. And the left out rejected wastes which will have come down to only 10 percent will be taken to the landfills by the municipality.
Poonam believes, if each individual in the city takes the proper waste management responsibility, then the garbage dumping in the city will be reduced to 60%. The composter not only lessens the load on public agencies dealing with garbage but also reduces the emission of methane gas
How does the composter work?
She started Daily Dump in the year 2006 in a vision to re-imagine our relationship with the earth. Making available composter (a tall cylindrical-shaped made of terracotta) had made people feel fun and simple. The composter has three compartments, where at first you need to put your waste into the composter and cover it with a remix powder which is sold the Daily Dump itself.
“Compositing is a simple method. The chemistry is that if there is enough carbon, which comes from the remix powder, and enough oxygen, which is why the terracotta composter has holes, you do not generate any bad smell. Nearly 60% of your dustbin is made up of organic waste. So, if you keep 60% of this waste inside the region of your house, the public infrastructure isn’t under too much significance,” said Poonam.
The plastic-free composters are made by potter communities from all over the country like Madurai in Tamil Nadu, Madanapalle in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Dhubri in Assam. Daily Dump also brings its earthen composters from regional potters and encourages their livelihoods. Apart from a normal composter, there are also different types such as Leaf composter, Lotus Manthan, Aaga 550, Prithvi, etc. The products are available on their website.
“Once people start experiencing the world a little more, they aspire to contribute. So, my mission was to make it fun and easy. Even after 13 years, my advice to people remains that composting is easy, fun and you feel great about it,” she said.
Referred Article: TheBetterIndia
Follow the video to know the process:
