Suggestions for an invention for food waste, an imperative for a green nation

It is the duty of each of us to promote the wellbeing of our glorious planet and take initiatives with the realisation that our food could be our planet’s food as well, provided we dispose of it wisely  – Pic by Rimzy Mahil 

It is up to us humans who inhabit this planet to think of diverse ways and means to occupy it without destroying it. One of the ways we are killing the planet is by drowning it and ourselves in refuse which we as a nation take little trouble to sort and recycle.

With regard to food waste there are diverse methods we could follow to prevent such wastage. While cooking and consuming in a minimalistic manner and sharing any leftovers with charity-oriented groups that feed the lesser fortunate are some of the methods we as individuals should adopt, food refuse is also an important fertiliser that we should learn to put to maximum use.

The below points by Ranjit Seneviratne are in reference to some of the suggestions made by him for a simple invention for food waste so that it could be turned to compost. He hopes that youth in schools and universities could be guided to undertake such an innovation that could be made even from items such as metal scraps. 

These suggestions were made by him at an Inception Workshop by the Megapolis Ministry, FAO and IWMI on 27 June 2019 and focuses on ‘Innovative Approaches to Reduce-Reuse-Recycle Food Waste’.

Composting food and kitchen waste in just three days

As mentioned at the workshop about composting dustbins, I have been trying to get people to use them over many years. First in 2004 at an apartment complex I managed – I had seven bins for food waste (one for each day of the week) and a separate bin for other waste. It failed – because plastics and other waste was mixed with the food waste. 

I have had one in my own home, but here too, the people concerned forget to put in dried leaves that need to be interspersed with food waste to make it work correctly.

Then I had a flash of inspiration.

I bought a new blender for the kitchen and used the old Blender to grind up the food and kitchen waste (with a little water) into a sort of “puree” or soup.

A small bucket of waste was reduced to half a bucket, because anything that is ground up or cut-up fine reduces in volume.

I dug a small hole about eight- to 10-inches deep in my garden, poured the puree into it and covered it with soil. No smell, no flies or ants and neither did rats and other animals disturb it.

After just three days there was no trace of it, only some bits of eggshells. The worms and other soil flora had consumed it and made it part of the top-soil. So I now call the puree my ‘Wormy Smoothie’ – It works like a charm. Of course it may take a little longer in gardens that have hard, compacted soil and therefore less worms and other soil flora. 

The suggestion I would like to make is that this ‘Wormy Smoothie’ idea could be taken a step further, perhaps by our universities. In addition, manufacturers of agriculture machinery could make a large blender with a metal container and large blender-type blades. 

These could be used in schools and apartment complexes and even restaurants and hotels. Small-holder farmers and people with large gardens could be invited to take this sort of liquid compost in drums to fertilise their farms and gardens free-of-charge, like the people who take garbage to feed pigs, as mentioned at the workshop.

Another idea that may be worth trying as a way to speed up the composting of the city waste that is to be transported by train to the new dump site at Arawakkalu, is to use the natural biota in the soil (earth worms, etc.) to do the ‘composting’ directly in the soil itself, to become part of the top-soil.

(1) We will need to make a large-scale machine that would blend the waste with water.

(2)  Make another machine that has a tank to transport the sludge, with a device in front that would dig a 10-inch deep furrow and a device to control the flow of sludge into the furrow and another blade device in the rear that would cover the furrow with soil.

This device could be towed by a tractor or could be made as a self-powered machine and could be used in farms or in any open area, including the grass verges of roads. As an added benefit, this would make the grass verges absorb more rainwater into the soil as the top-soil improves.

I would welcome any comments or more ideas to expand the use of this speeded-up composting method, that is based on the natural composting system found in forests; using soil flora to covert biomass to top-soil.

(Ranjit Seneviratne is a marine engineer by profession. He was Project Operations Officer, FAO, Rome and one of his projects dubbed ‘Blue Revolution’ by the locals resulted in the Government of Bangladesh winning the first Souma Award, given by FAO to a government that best developed an FAO project. His FAO Project in Eritrea was shortlisted for the second Souma Award and two of his Project Managers won B.R. Sen Awards for Excellence. He is currently a soil healing consultant who maintains his Colombo home garden as a laboratory to develop various techniques of 

biodiversity conservation that includes rainwater 

harvesting.)