Composting is undoubtedly one of the best practices to adopt during your sustainability journey! However, we know it can sound a little overwhelming at first since it feels like a huge lifestyle change and lots of effort. But at Project Kive, we’re always here to make things easier for you and so today we share the story of two adorable siblings, Sahil and Chandini, who just made their first batch of compost together at home. Does that sound like a new sibling goal? We say yes!
Here’s how their experience was –
Lockdown living and experimenting are two words that have become much too familiar in our lives now. A simple activity of ‘saving’ our waste honestly turned into such a beautiful experience. My sister and I have always theoretically discussed what sustainable living could look like, and the lockdown allowed us to explore what actions are simple and manageable. We began our composting journey last year. We were pretty skeptical about it.
To begin with, we live in a multi-storeyed apartment with limited balcony space, and we thought we didn’t generate that much food waste, as it was only the two of us. Additionally, we are both avid plant parents and have close to 100 plants in 700 sq. foot space that requires regular nutrition. While our main motive was to reduce our carbon footprint, it also led to having better control over what we were feeding our plants. We started by researching home composting units. There are so many companies for so many different types of waste and the kind of home space you have. We choose DailyDump, a Bangalore based company providing a wide variety of home composting methods. We went with the three-tiered gobbler; this comes with an instruction manual, neem powder and remix powder. It’s relatively easy to use this and begin your composting journey. All you need is your kitchen waste, newspaper and rake to mix your compost. So once we set the container, we had to segregate our kitchen waste into compostable and non-compostable waste, the instruction manual had a list of waste which had to be avoided. Our nightly routine was to add fresh wet waste to the container, then add a layer of remix powder and top it off with neem powder every second day.
Also Read: Ever Wondered What Happens to Milk Packets After You Have Disposed Them Off?
Every week, we had to mix the waste to let oxygen pass through it, as aeration is essential in aerobic composting. It was pretty funny for the first few weeks; we would be scared to fill up the container in 5 days and run out of space as we only had three containers. After 2-3 weeks, we noticed that the waste was getting compressed, and worms were also coming; these signs meant we were on the right track and continued with our routine. We started our compost journey in December 2020, and this is the solid gold we made out of our kitchen waste. The joy of seeing this compost was surreal; something which we would earlier throw out or not even give heed to turned into something useful. It was beautiful to see that once we started composting, our non-compostable wet waste reduced substantially.
December 2020 
July 2021
This composting journey has led to a domino effect in our life – we cook more often – to generate food waste – to make plant food – to have a vibrant space that gives us joy and back to eating good food!
The story was submitted by Sahil Gochhayat.
Have an interesting sustainability story to share? Please write to us at hello@projectkive.com. To stay updated with our latest stories, follow us on Instagram.
