EXNORA AND THEIR ASSOCIATE NEWS IN THIS WEEK
NEWS FROM THE HINDU Tamil Nadu - Chennai Easy to manage your kitchen waste Staff Reporter Bacteria, earthworms take care of composting ECO-FRIENDLY APPROACH: The newly-inaugurated Exnora compost park displays different methods to manage organic waste. - Photo: S. S. Kumar Chennai : For a quick lesson on five different types of composting kitchen and garden waste, simply step into the backyard of Exnora International's office on Giriappa Road in T. Nagar. The `compost park', inaugurated on Friday, gives visitors a hands-on experience on how to segregate waste, prepare a pre-compost bed, introduce earthworms or bacteria and obtain dry manure. P.D. Singh, Head of HSBC (Southern India), opened the park. Exnora, with the sponsorship of HSBC, has developed the park to show which composting method is best suited for a home, office or institution. The low-cost methods can be employed using materials such as used tyres or plastic crates. The first display is a large vat used for vermi-composting. Earthworms chomp the pre-composted waste and excrete powdery, odour-free compost. In aerobic composting, air is allowed to circulate freely and bacteria break down the waste. Exnora's field officer B. Paramanandan has been so successful with the cow dung composting method that snails and slugs -- found in rich garden soil -- have made their appearance in the cured waste. Most composting methods take 90 days to produce manure. However, enzyme composting takes only 15 days, Mr. Paramanandan said. This method is only for large institutions as the enzyme is costly. Simple technique Even apartment-dwellers who have little space to spare can compost kitchen waste using flowerpots. "Waste comes free. Bacteria, earthworms and sunshine take care of the composting. All you need to spend is a bit of your time," said Exnora Founder M. B. Nirmal. He urged the Chennai Corporation to lead by example and implement solid waste management in the Ripon Building. The Chennai Corporation would consider replicating the compost model in its parks, said Corporation Joint Commissioner (Revenue) M. Chandrasekaran. Also, if more individuals were to take up composting at home, it would bring down the pressure on the garbage dumping yards in the city. About 50 - 60 per cent of solid waste generated by Chennai is organic. The public, especially school and college students, are encouraged to visit the Exnora compost park. Contact 28153377 or 52121673 for details. News from hindu Zero-waste management project for three wards in Nagapattinam Special Correspondent Pammal model being taken to other places in the State NAGAPATTINAM: For the first time, zero-waste management project has been launched in the Nagapattinam municipal area with the joint initiative of Nagai Exnora, Nagapattinam Municipality and PepsiCo. Collector Tenkasi S. Jawahar, who inaugurated the facility on Friday, said that initially the programme would be implemented in the three wards of 12, 15 and 16, at a cost of Rs.11.97 lakh. Seven persons had been appointed and provided with garbage collection carts to collect the organic and inorganic wastes from nearly 1,600 houses. The scheme would be extended to all the other wards soon. Zero waste management project that has been executed successfully by Exnora at Pammal in Chennai for the past two years is being extended to Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Tenkasi municipalities. P.N. Kuppusamy, district president of Nagai Exnora (Exnora Innovators Club), said that the objective of the project was to evolve a garbage- free Nagapattinam with extensive green cover. The project envisages collection of garbage from the households and segregated at source as organic and inorganic. V. Sundar and P. Chandrasekaran, Director and Project Director respectively of Nagai Exora, said that continuous door-to-door campaigns, awareness rallies and street plays were organised to propagate the salient features of the project. Organic waste is being converted into vermicompost using earthworms in a well-designed compost yard and inorganic waste will be sorted and recycled. P. Thangapillai, chairperson of Nagapattinam Municipality, said that a well designed zero-waste centre had been constructed at Cooks Road behind Government Hospital. The centre has separate facilities for production of vermicomposting, recyclable wastes segregation breeding the earthworms and pre-curing organic waste. V. Marimuthu, MLA, V. Selvam, president of Nagai Exnora, and Y. Thiagarajan, coordinator (corporate affairs), PepsiCo India, spoke. News from Chennai online Birla's tsunami relief plan pays off Search for More News Porayar, Feb 10: A sustainable livelihood development plan for tsunami survivors of Tarangambadi, one of the worst affected areas in Nagapattinam district, devised by BHW Birla Home Finance, has started showing good results, a top official of the company said. Inaugurating a multipurpose community hall constructed by BHW Birla Home Finance, a subsidiary of Deutsche Postbank, the largest financial services provider in Germany, at the town for tsunami survivors, he said that the plan came into being 18 months ago. "We did not want to just make donations, but create permanent wealth for continuous develop development. We chose tsunami-hit Tarangambadi for that purpose," the official said. They created a fishermen's welfare trust and donated three mini vans to the trust, which were given to fisherwomen to carry their produce to the market. The women were allowed to hire the vehicles at a nominal rent and the proceeds were given to the trust. Within a year, the trust had around Rs one lakh deposit and this amount would be utilized to carry out some other sustainable welfare activities, he said, adding that the income from the hall would also be given to the trust. Later, inaugurating a free vocational training programme for tsunami- hit youth, he said BHW Birla Home finance was carrying out tsunami rehabilitation activities in the area through Rejuvenate India Movement (RIM), an all India network of NGOs. Rangarajan, RIM coordinator said RIM had formed mass movements in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Uttaranchal and West Bengal and had been working to deepen democracy, harnessing entitlements and self reliant communities. Rangarajan said that in the aftermath of the tsunami, RIM carried out relief distribution, cash for work program as transitional employment generation, mass cleaning campaigns, cleaning of ponds affected by tsunami. In the long-term rehabilitation programme, RIM works on Quality education program in eight Government schools in the area, involving 2279 children with the aid of Plan International, an organisation that works for the development of poverty-stricken children in various countries, he said. "We have also focussed our attention on replenishing agriculture in tsunami-hit Tarangambadi area, community based disaster preparedness, persons with disability and training in information technology for the youth", he said. 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