"" We litter we clean", this was a phrase coined by a friend. It was the moment I realized that, if we have to move towards a sustainable lifestyle, handling our own trash was the first step. That was the beginning of my composting journey. I bought a 'Trustbin' n got off to a start. I also started interacting with like minded individuals who introduced me to the 'Comepost ' group on WhatsApp.
Now my household segregates leftovers right from the dinner plates into edible n compostable. Thumb rule is, if it's edible n can sustain a life, that gets priority. The veg n fruit peels are taken by my house help for her cow and the food scraps are fed to the street dogs. As such, the waste, such as tea leaves, onion peels etc was negligible. The only issue was dry leaves from the mango trees in the garden.
The sharing of knowledge and seeing other members taking up leaf composting, inspired me to try my hands at it. On 19th Dec '20, keeping date with Liberation Day, I took off. I've got a simple setup , two circular columns of net. To this i add dry leaves n cow-dung slurry every 15 days. I water it down once in a way just to keep the moisture level for the organisms to thrive. Once the leaves started decomposing, I kept adding household waste like tea leaves, peels of large fruits like pineapple n papaya and nirmalya. I then cover it with a layer of dry leaves, to avoid fruit flies.
This October i harvested my first heap of dark n nutrient rich compost, devoid of any odour. It was such an amazing feeling, that I had saved so many leaves from being burnt n so much waste from entering the landfill my small contribution towards saving the environment from pollution. It's been a fantastic learning experience."
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