My son Aren (4) often points out to hills and asks, "Dada, will you take me up that hill one day."
Yesterday, since his mum and sister went out for a movie and I was daddysitting, I thought of doing just that. Taking him up the hill. With my camera. We went up alongside Lourdes Convent, then crossed the Sonarbhat hill road and walked up to the temple, now painted neatly and maintained well. Aren had a good time. We walked up half-way till the seminary, and then came back via the cashew grove alongside the seminary well. "Are you sure there are no tigers here?" he asked me at one point. While walking however, at least on 2-3 occasions, the four-year-old told me, "Dada, I'm getting a bad smell." He was right. There seemed to be small piles (which I didn't see) of decomposing wastes at some points of the trek. I was curious as to where this is coming from. Perhaps those who have been working long on such issues, via the consumers' forum, would know better. I remembered the days when we used to just dump our wastes on the hill, and it would get disinfected (I presume) by the sunlight. But now there's much more plastics and bio-nondegradables in our waste. And we consume a lot more too. Just came across the article below via Aldona-Net which I thought of sharing with you. FN 18.02.2008 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- LEARNING (ABOUT) RUBBISH: IT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE By Savio Figueiredo [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From Aldona-Net Garbage is a problem that affects all of us. A meeting of the Panchayat members with the Comunidade Office bearers on February 11, 2008 resulted in Hector Fernandes offering to arrange a visit to Codli Mines of Sesa Goa to get a first hand view of their succesful vermiculture plant and other garbage related as as environment friendly activities. So a team of seven Aldonkars visited Codli Mines on Feb 16. They included Vallabh Polle Sarpanch, Maryann D'Souza deputy sarpanch and head of the Garbage Committee, Dr Marie De Souza GC member, Effie D'Souza ex-panch, Freddy D'Souza comunidade member, Hector D'Souza and Savio Figueiredo GC member. We were met by the Mines Manager Mr. Coelho who is incidentally from Moira, and then escorted by Mr Khedekar for a tour of the mines. After a tour of the mining activity, we visited the wet biodegradable garbage treatment facility. Here canteen waste, paper and leaves are subject to vermiculture. The entire facility is surrounded by a channel of water to prevent ingress of ants which are the biggest enemies of the earthworms. Please see the photos on this link http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/?saved=1 The process in brief: 1. Canteen kitchen waste, paper, leaves are shredded and laid out in the vermicomposter. (Cooked food is first washed of the masala.) 2. The spread is moistened at regular intervals. 3. The earthworms ingest the food and then excrete it, producing 12 kgs of compost every day. The entire area is totally smell free and a blindfolded person wiould not guess that he or she is at a garbage treatment plant. Other salient points of the visit is the attempt to segregate different types of waste at all levels such as the canteen, workshop and office areas. All scrap too is stored separately -- such as rubber, cast iron scrap, other metallic scrap etc. All washings form the truck wash and workshop area are treated to separate the oil from the water. The clean treated water is used for the gardening. On the way back we visited the Azad Maidan area to see first-hand the collection and segragation of scrap and made contact with Mr Lallu, who expressed interest in picking up scrap from Aldona. We have to identify a place to deposit all our non biodegradable garbage at one point (after collection on wardwise basis). Mr Lallu will then segregate the scrap and take it free of cost. Let's see how it works out. We are grateful to the Management of Sesa Goa and the staff of the Codli Mines for their hospitality and support (especially Mr Coelho & Mr Khedekar). Thanks to Hector too for making this trip possible. [FOOTNOTE: Aldona-Net is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aldona-net] Savio Figueiredo is based in Aldona, Goa and takes an active interest in local community issues as well as cyberspace. He runs the Rendeep Cyber Cafe there. Contact him with your feedback. -- Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org Ph +91-832-2409490 The Goa books blog: http://goabooks.wordpress.com Goa1556 (alt.publishing.goa): http://goa1556.goa-india.org _______________________________________________ Saligao 403511 website http://saligao.goa-india.org Saligaonet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goacom.org/mailman/listinfo/saligaonet
