Accelerated Composting Technique for Municipal Solid Wastes Recycling in India

Rapid urbanization, industrialization and agricultural intensification are accompanied with generation of huge amounts of rural and urban wastes. The estimated annual production of agricultural byproducts/wastes of field crops, fruits and vegetable crops waste are 679, 83.34 and 173 Mt, respectively out of which surplus available for processing are estimated at 233, 41.67 and 86.50 Mt. Annually, most of the metropolitan cities of India are generating about 64.8 million tonnes of city refuse during the year 2010 with a potential of 9.1 million tonnes of compost per annum. Present study have been carried out to evolve efficient ways to ensure improvement in available nutrient status of composts through microbial enriched compost. The objective of the study was to accelerate the decomposition process, improvement of nutritional quality and minimize the heavy metals in end product. To evolve efficient ways cellulolytic organisms viz., Aspergillus heteromorphus, Aspergillus terrus, Aspergillus flavus and Rhizomucor pusillus along with mineral nitrogen was used to accelerate the process of decomposition and its maturity indices and the manurial value was compared with existing farmers practices. Results showed that the microbial enriched compost proved better to produce higher quality manure, shorten the usual period of composting from 6 months to 2.5 months.