Slowly, but surely, the face of villages is changing for the better with people getting acquainted with segregation of garbage. Not only that, the garbage is being transformed to vermicompost and used for plants.
Take the case of Kodakanchi village in Jinnaram mandal with about 3,000 population. The villagers have completed construction of a dumpyard and started segregating wet and dry garbage as directed by the officials. Many villages in four mandals in the district including Jinnaram and Kohir are following the same.
So far, vermicompost was produced six times, each time 15 bags, at the dump yard.
That is being used at nurseries, avenue plantation and parks. Some of the farmers have also taken that for use in their farms. The village level officials say that it takes about four to five days to dry the kitchen garbage and use it in preparing the compost. Red wiggler worms will be put in the yard bins to produce the compost.
At Sajjapur and Picharagadi villages in Kohir mandal four bags of compost was collected each time. Here also it was used for nurseries, avenue plantation and Palle Prakruthi Vanams.
“We got about eight bags of vermicompost once, each bag consisting about 50 kilograms. This was used for nurseries, avenue plantation and the two rows of saplings planted at the dump yard. The plant growth is satisfactory,” said Ashok Reddy, Panchayat Secretary, Sajjapur.
“With naked eye, one can understand whether the vermi compost is ready or not. Once you release red wiggler worms and pour some water, it is sure that the compost will be ready in the next 45 days. We are using this compost even at our houses,” says D.V. Sadhana, panchayat secretary of Kodakanchi
Plantation drive
“The first priority for using vermicompost is plantation drive taken up by the government like nurseries, Haritha Haram and Palle Prakruti Vanams. Once the requirement is fulfilled we will extend this to farmers,” district panchayat officer V. Suresh Mohan told The Hindu, adding that construction of dump yards was completed in all villages and compost production was commenced in some villages.
