“Everyone talks about food waste. But how many of us really have it on our agenda?” asks K.Thirupathi. Pharmacy professor and one of the directors of TempleCity group of hotels, he spearheads the “clean green healthy” initiative in Madurai.
At his lush green organic farm at Rajagambhiram in Needhi Nagar behind the new High Court building, he grows different types of gourds and greens, tomatoes, shallots, drumsticks, brinjal, lady’s finger, chilli, guava, papaya, amla, banana, tapioca and more. On a sunny weekday, two school children on vacation and a housewife happily shop inside the farm plucking vegetables of their choice.
“This place yields 90 kg of different types of vegetables. I allow the local residents to walk around in this mini organic farm and choose their vegetables,” he says.
It is an inspiring success story of four years that follows a simple recycling process.
“We collect food waste from hotels, convert it into organic enriched compost, cultivate good quality vegetables and fruits that are returned to the hotel kitchens for preparing organic food for customers and also sold in the market,” explains Thirupathi.
Waste to Fresh: Organic produce from kitchen waste
He owns two more similar farms at Pulipatti near Melur and near Aruppakottai on Ring Road. “I have been silently doing my bit to move towards Green,” he says and adds how a similar solid waste management project with the Madurai Corporation shot him to fame recently when a Delhi-based media organisation, inUth.com did a video on the initiative touting it as a model for the rest of the country. With the youtube video going viral, Thirupathi hopes this perfect example of PPP will encourage more people to treat their bulk food scraps sustainably.
It all started when the previous Madurai Corporation Commissioner Sandeep Nanduri, impressed with Thirupathi’s pilot project at Needhi Nagar signed a MoU with him last summer and donated 5.5 acres in Mastanpatti near Karuppayurani for farming and installing a high tech accelerated composting machine. It became operational last December, when Thirupathi as the Project Head of Innovative Hotel Waste Management and Recycling, began collecting, segregating, transporting and treating the food garbage from 19 hotels across the city.
There are 240 hotels affiliated to Madurai District Hotels Association. So far 30 hotels have agreed in principle to join this venture. At present, 11 restaurants of the TempleCity chain and eight more hotels and stand alone restaurants including North Gate, Heritage, Parvathy and Sri Saravana Bhavan are proactive in the scheme separating their organic waste for composting and collectively stopping around five tonnes of garbage from reaching the landfill each day. Instead, the kitchen and food waste is getting converted into black gold (nutrient-rich manure) at the Mastanpatti composting yard.
“During festivals and other auspicious days, some kalyana mandapams also pitch in and the food waste sorted and shredded goes up to 10 tonnes to 15 tonnes,” says Thirupathi. Of the 700 mahals in the city, so far 20 have committed their participation.
The city generates 650 tonnes of waste and one-tenth of it comes from the hospitality industry, says the Madurai Corporation Commissioner, Dr.Aneesh Sekhar, who is happy with the scientific processing of garbage at the unit and in order to encourage participation of more hoteliers has relaxed the garbage user fee collection tax.
In anticipation of more hotels joining the green venture, Thirupathi is contemplating to upgrade the shredding machine from 10 tonnes per day capacity to three tonnes per hour. Under the arrangement, the revenue earned from the sales of manure, crops and seeds will be shared equally by the Madurai Corporation and KT Greens.
It was former President Dr.A P J Abdul Kalam who sparked the idea in Thirupathi. “I met him at Madurai airport in 2010. When he learnt I am a pharmacy professor and also into family’s hotel business, he nudged me to do become a ‘pasumai nayakan (green man)”.
When Thirupathi started talking to farmers, he learnt they were using only chemical-ridden pesticides. “I looked at our hotel bins filled to the brim, smelling, rotting and infested with flies,” he says. He put his pharmaceutical knowledge to use and developed a stock solution with 24 microorganisms. Just 10 ml of this when added to 10 litres of coconut water collected from the hotels’ kitchens overnight turned into a healthy and huge package of microorganisms suitable to the type of waste generated in food industry.
Four years ago, Thirupathi launched K T Greens and kickstarted his dream with the Temple City branch near Kathapatti toll gate on Melur Road. The kitchen waste was segregated, shredded and composted after spraying it with the stock solution. Within three weeks, nutrient rich manure was ready and he used it in his barren land in Needhi Nagar to grow crops. The result is there for all to see.
He says every farm produce is sold at fixed rate of Rs.60 a kg irrespective of the market rate. “When small onions were selling at Rs.120 a kg, we sold at Rs.60 and likewise when tomatoes were going for Rs.20, we sold ours at Rs.60 per kg and did not lose customers.” At all the Temple City Organic Farms, seeds at Rs.10 per pack and manure at Rs.40 for two kg pack are also available for sales along with the organically grown fruits and vegetables. This informal farm market works daily except Fridays while door deliveries are done from 9 a.m to 1 p.m. every day. The farm produce are also sold at subsidised rates to the hotels who give their garbage for processing.
About 100 kg of food garbage yields 18 kg of pure organic manure. Each participating hotel has to register with K T Greens at a fee of Rs.990 and for the pick up, transportation, segregation and treatment of their food garbage needs to pay Rs.200 per day. “It is not much considering the high quality of greens and vegetables they get while we clear their premises of the food wastes,” says Thirupathi. “We have to build on this positive start,” he asserts.
How it works
After registration, the participating hotel gets a certificate and garbage bags with unique code. The hotel staff is educated to do one initial round of segregation of their garbage. The food waste bags are lifted daily by K T Greens staff in their vans and brought to Mastanpatti. A second round of segregation is done on the conveyor belt from where it goes inside the shredding machine. The shredded particles are put in a 200 feet long pit and sprayed with the coconut water containing microorganism concentrate. The bio compost solution accelerates composting and within three weeks the highly nutrient disease resistant manure is ready to be used in farming healthy organic crops
Quote:
Aneesh Shekar, Commissioner of Madurai Corporation.
Photo: R. Ashok
Zero waste management is a challenge and food waste is a valuable resource. People need to understand waste food recycling makes long term economic and environmental sense -- Dr.Aneesh Sekhar, Madurai Corporation Commissioner
